


Tender Years

by justtakeachanceanddance



Series: Tender Years [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Daddy Kurt, Future Fic, M/M, Teenage Parents, daddy Blaine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justtakeachanceanddance/pseuds/justtakeachanceanddance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Kurt and Blaine are single dads to seven year olds in New York City. When Kurt’s son invites Blaine’s daughter out on a date, it kicks off a day that Kurt and Blaine will never forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Announcement

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by [this Humans of New York Tumblr photo](http://leepbc14.tumblr.com/post/22692356341/leepbc14-leepbc14-leepbc14) of two incredibly adorable kids in NYC. I wrote a little ficlet, lots of people flailed and demanded more, and so...here it is! Title is nabbed from lyrics from the song “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

"Dad," Elliot began, his voice solemn and far too adult-like for a cherub-faced boy of seven years old. "I have something important to tell you."

Kurt put his fork down beside his plate, dabbing a napkin at the corner of his mouth before speaking. "Okay. What's up, Ell?"

Elliot drew in a deep breath; his chest puffing up like a balloon before his words rushed out on an exhale. " _Ihaveagirlfriend_."

Kurt's eyebrows shot up, but he quickly reigned in the laugh that threatened to burst from his lungs. "Oh?" he said, his voice a little higher than normal.

"Yes." Elliot's expression was still stone-serious. Kurt bit the inside of his bottom lip as hard as he could stand to stop himself from grinning. "Her name is Maya. She's the smartest girl in my class."

"Well, that's very impressive, Ell." Kurt was already etching the conversation into his permanent memory, placing it alongside countless other warm moments the two had shared over the years together – his son, at the ripe age of seven, telling his father about his first girlfriend over a quiet Friday night dinner. "Congratulations."

"I-it's okay, right?" Elliot's voice faltered for the first time, truer to his normally shy demeanor. "If I have a girlfriend? Instead of boyfriends like you?"

Kurt's face softened immediately. "Oh, Ell." He reached across their tiny kitchen table and held his son's freckled hand, still chubby with baby fat and sticky from his day at school. "You can like whoever you want to like. I don't care if it's boys or girls, as long as you're always happy."

Elliot cocked his head, considering Kurt's words for a few moments before nodding curtly. "Okay," he said, pausing to take an enormous bite of his pasta, and Kurt once again had to hide his smile over how quickly kids could shift from one emotion to another. Elliot chewed and swallowed purposefully, then spoke again. "I invited her to the parade tomorrow. It's, like, a...a date."

"Oh, did you now?" Kurt was truly surprised at that. "What do Maya’s mom and dad think about her going to the pride parade?"

Elliot's sky blue eyes sparkled with joy. "She doesn't _have_ a mom. She's just like me!"

***

"But _Daddy_!"

"I'm sorry, Maya. We can't go to the parade tomorrow." Blaine's words were muffled by the refrigerator he had his upper body buried in as he rummaged through leftovers in search of anything edible to serve his daughter for dinner. "Daddy has to be at the theatre at noon for his show. You know how important Daddy's musical is."

Blaine let out a tiny _aha!_ when he found the remnants of the chicken he'd roasted two afternoons ago, hidden behind juice boxes and yogurt cups and dozens of packs of string cheese. When he pulled himself out of the fridge, Tupperware in hand, he was greeted by his daughter’s famous pout – one of _epic_ proportions. “Maya…” he sighed.

“ _Please_ , Daddy!” Maya looked like she was about to burst into tears. “I _really really_ wanna go. I told Elly we’d be there.”

“Who’s Elly?”

Maya instantly blushed, her golden cheeks reddening to a perfect pink hue. “My boyfriend,” she whispered, dropping her hazel eyes to the floor and swinging her upper body back and forth in that nervous, girly way she always did when she was about to burst from excitement.

Blaine nearly dropped the container to the floor. He managed to slide it onto the counter before crouching down to meet his daughter at eye level. “Wait. Your _what_?”

“My _boyfriend_.” Maya glanced up at her father through long, dark lashes that always reminded Blaine of a fairytale princess, spun in dreams and fantasies and certainly not standing before him as his own flesh and blood. “He asked me on a date to the parade. He’s going with his daddy.”

“Okay. Hold up.” Blaine held a hand in the air as he stood, leaning back against the kitchen counter and cracking open the lid of the container to reach for a piece of chicken. “Your _boyfriend_ – we’ll leave that one alone for the moment – your _boyfriend_ invited you on a date to the _gay pride_ parade. With his _dad_.”

“Uh huh. He said he and his daddy go every year.” Maya eyed the chicken that Blaine popped into his mouth, and Blaine offered her the next piece he snagged, wincing a little when he realized he was feeding his daughter cold chicken for dinner. _Another night, another meal on the fly._

“Do they?” 

“Yup! His daddy is just like you!” She grinned up at him, bright-eyed and innocent, and Blaine wondered if he would ever stop falling in love with his daughter. 

“Just like me, huh?” 

Maya nodded, her head bobbing up and down exaggeratedly as she chewed noisily on chicken. 

“And where are you supposed to meet… _Elly_?” 

“Fifth and eighth!” she chirped, holding out a tiny hand for another piece of chicken. “At nine o’clock.” 

“ _Nine o–_ ” Blaine cut himself off with a sigh. “Are you gonna get up that early? That’s a long train ride from here.” 

“Yes, yes!” Maya jumped up and down, sending her pale purple skirt billowing around her brown knees. “I _promise_ , Daddy! _Please_!” 

_This is how it starts_ , Blaine thought wryly as he eyed his daughter’s pleading stare, her plump hands curled together in tight prayer. _Getting me to take her on dates when she’s only seven. Soon enough she’ll be dragging me to Tiffany’s._

“We can only stay a little while,” Blaine warned. “When I say we have to go, we _have_ to go. Daddy can’t be late for work.” 

Maya squealed and threw her arms around Blaine’s legs. “ _Thankyouthankyouthankyou_ , Daddy!” She pressed a loud kiss against his dark denim pants before turning and running through the living room to her bedroom. 

“Hey!” Blaine called after her. “Where do you think you’re going? We haven’t even had dinner.” 

“I have to pick out something to _wear_ , Daddy!” came Maya’s muffled voice from her bedroom. 

Blaine shook his head, rubbing a palm over his tired eyes and chuckling as he reached for another piece of cold chicken. 


	2. The Morning Of

"What do you think about this one, Dad?" Elliot was breathless as he popped into Kurt's doorframe, a black top hat perched on his head. His chestnut hair poked out from under the brim, splaying messily across his forehead.

"You look _fantastic_ , Ell!" Kurt dropped his jacket to his bed as he complimented his son, keeping his tone light to counter-balance the young boy’s obvious nerves. He reached out and brushed Elliot's bangs to the side with his thumb; the absent gesture briefly sent his thoughts back to his high school days, ten long years ago, when he was still a guarded, Midwestern teenager, brushing his own hair away with a dainty thumb.

Still in the closet. Still trying to pretend he liked girls. Just before what would end up being the most blessed accident of his life.

“Here, let me help you with those sleeves.” Kurt knelt in front of Elliot and tugged on the cuffs of his button down, folding them neatly over the wrists of his gray jacket. “There! _Perfect._ ”

Kurt sat back on his heels and admired his son’s ensemble: from his hat to his skinny green tie to his favorite indigo jeans, worn and faded around the knees from hours of running in the park. Elliot may not have inherited his sexual orientation, Kurt thought with a satisfied nod. But damn if his son didn't have his shrewd sense of style.

“I especially love those laces,” Kurt said, tapping a finger against the neon green shoelaces threaded through Elliot’s tan suede shoes. “You ready to go?”

“Uh huh.” Without another word, Elliot clasped Kurt’s hand in his and started pulling him through the door. 

“Wait, wait!” Kurt exclaimed with a laugh, stopping Elliot and reaching back to his bed to snatch his jacket. “Boy, I’ve never seen you so excited!”

“You’ll see, Dad.” When Elliot grabbed Kurt’s hand again, Kurt let his son haul him out of his bedroom toward the front door. “She’s the most beautiful girl in the whole _world_.”

***

“How do I look, Daddy?” Maya asked as she twirled into the center of the living room. The skirt of her green dress trailed in the air around her, offering a peek of the pink leopard print on the fabric under the hem.

“Like the most beautiful girl in the entire universe,” Blaine answered automatically, his voice still thick and rough from sleep.

Maya giggled. “That’s what you _always_ say!”

“Well, it’s always true!” Blaine took another sip of his coffee, eyeing his daughter over the steam rising up from the mug in his hand. “Why the green dress?”

“ _Because_ ,” she started in a worldly tone that clearly meant to convey Blaine should know better. “That’s Elly’s favorite color!”

“Oh. _Sorry._ ” Blaine held one hand up in the air in defense as he took another swig from his mug. “You need to put a sweater on over that before we leave.”

“I _knoowww_.” Maya rushed over to the hall closet and yanked out a sweater – her favorite one, pink with big bell sleeves and a loose-knit crochet pattern, sent over from Italy or Spain or wher _ever_ Santana was roaming when she happened to briefly remember she had a daughter.

Maya wrapped the soft fabric around her body, expertly sticking her tanned arms into the sleeves before flipping her hands under the collar, sending a wild mass of curly, caramel hair into the air behind her. “Okay, all ready!”

“ _Jeez_ , Maya, I’m not even done with my coffee yet. Sit down for a few minutes, would you?” Blaine ran a hand through the mop of sleep-mussed curls on top of his head. It was days like this when he wondered how he had any hair left at all, after clumsily chasing around his precocious daughter for the past seven years.

“We can’t be late!”

“We _won’t_. It’s only seven o’clock.” Blaine reached for his iPad, lying on the cushion at the end of the couch. “Here,” he said, flipping through to the morning’s _New York Times_. He stretched out an arm and caught Maya’s hand, pulling her down to the couch beside him. “Read.” 

He thrust the iPad into her lap, placing a peck on top of her head and inhaling deeply. Her hair still smelled impossibly sweet from her bath the night before – like strawberries and candy and little girl.

“I love you, baby,” Blaine mumbled into her hair.

“ _Daddy._ ”

“ _Okay_ , okay!” He eased himself up with a groan and staggered toward the bathroom, stopping halfway to look back one last time at the cozy image of his daughter, curled into the corner of the couch, swaddled in pretty pink yarn and warm morning sunlight.

Grinning in spite of himself, Blaine stumbled into the bathroom and turned the faucet on full blast. Something told him he’d need to be refreshed for whatever they had ahead of them that day.


	3. The Meetup

Elliot fidgeted uncomfortably as he stood on the sidewalk, scrutinizing the face of each person who walked past his silent post. They’d been there, on the leafy corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, since eight thirty-seven – exactly sixteen minutes by Kurt’s count. Kurt shifted from one Converse-clad foot to the other, sending up a grateful sigh that the day had dawned unseasonably cool for June.

“What if she doesn’t come?” Elliot finally asked at eight fifty-six, his childish voice just rising over the din of taxis and passers-by.

“Well,” Kurt started slowly, doing his best to keep his expression neutral. “If she doesn’t come, then we’ll still have fun watching the parade, right? Like we always do?”

Kurt’s heart fell when Elliot looked up at him, his blue eyes an ocean of sadness. Kurt squeezed his hand for support before offering him a little smirk. “Okay. If she doesn’t come, then we can go eat cheesecake for lunch and talk about how much girls stink,” he whispered conspiratorially, earning the tiniest smile from his son.

“But I know she’ll show up,” Kurt continued as he glanced up and down the sidewalk. It was still early in the morning; their chosen spot was far down the parade path from its starting point near the Empire State Building. But a lively, rainbow-hued crowd was slowly, surely growing around them with each passing moment. 

“You do?”

“Yup,” Kurt said with a firm nod. “How could anyone ever leave _you_ waiting?” He smiled down at his son, soaking up all of Elliot’s childish hope and faith and clutching it tightly in his chest, just as he held Elliot’s small hand in his own. Kurt wouldn’t let the two of them feel lost, or lonely, or small – not today in this throng of people, not in their lives, not _ever_. He simply kept watching for a mystery man and his beautiful daughter to emerge from the masses and walk straight toward them, like flowers sprouting from the dirt and grime and hectic city bustle.

“You said Maya doesn’t have a mom, either?” Kurt asked, absently toying with the rainbow feather brooch pinned to the chest of his black vest.

Elliot shook his head. “Her mom left when she was a baby. She ran away to…um…” he trailed off, biting down on a single fingernail the way he did when he couldn’t recall something important. “I don’t remember where she said. But now she just has a dad.”

“ _Oh_. I thought you meant her dad was…” Kurt shook his head, mentally cursing himself for letting his mind wander in such a silly direction. “Never mind.”

***

“Excuse me! _Excuse_ me!”

“Maya, don’t be rude!” Blaine called from behind, shooting apologetic looks through the dimly lit subway station at the people she’d shrilly shouted at. “You’re going to run into the wrong person one of these days and get us both killed, I swear to god,” he muttered to himself as he gripped her hand tighter.

“I said _excuse me_!” Maya retorted, pulling Blaine up the stairs to the sun-drenched world at street level. “They’re walkin’ too slow!”

Blaine rolled his eyes. Santana may have been completely absent from Maya’s life, but some days it wasn’t hard to guess who’d contributed the other half of his daughter’s genes.

There were people milling about _everywhere_ on the sidewalks: tourists and locals alike, dressed in suits and Speedos, wedding gowns and itty bitty denim cutoffs and outfits Blaine couldn’t even begin to describe – quintessential New York, doused in a spectrum of sparkle and color. Maya wove them through the crowds, blind to every spectacle. “Fifth, Sixth, Seventh...” she counted aloud as they strode down city blocks until they finally reached their destination.

“That’s him, Daddy! There’s Elly!”

Blaine’s gaze followed the brown finger Maya pointed across the street until his eyes fell on a pale-skinned, expertly dressed boy standing solemnly on the opposite corner. Blaine stifled an amused chuckle when he noticed the boy’s towering top hat, shading part of his face from the bright summer sun.

Blaine let his eyes wander down to the boy’s hand, which was clasped tightly in a larger, equally milky-white hand. His gaze traveled up the length of a lean, muscled arm clad in a pale pink dress shirt, and finally settled on the face of a man who appeared about his age. Dark sunglasses hid the man’s inscrutable expression, but not the sharp, alabaster lines of his nose and chin as he turned to look–

_**“Elly!”** _

Maya’s sudden shriek tore Blaine’s rapt attention from the captivating man standing just across the way. “ _Christ_ , Maya, lower your v–”

But Maya was off; her hand slipped from Blaine’s grip and she darted into the blocked-off street like a young fawn, leaving Blaine grasping nothing but air. A swish of curly brown hair and pink sweater was the last thing he saw before she disappeared in the swarming sea of people.


	4. The Introduction

"There she is!" Elliot exclaimed, shattering Kurt’s cool demeanor and causing him to jump with surprise. Before Kurt could collect himself, Elliot yanked his hand away and took off, leaving Kurt scrambling after him.

"Elliot! _Wait!_ " But Elliot didn’t stop for a moment. The straps of his backpack bounced against his shoulders as he dove into the thick, noisy street crowd.

Kurt kept his eyes glued on Elliot’s hat as he pushed himself between men and women of all ages, all colors, all sizes, calling his son’s name at the top of his lungs. He reached out, just able to wind his fingers around a single backpack strap; his nails dug deeply into the cushioned blue and brown nylon just as Elliot came to a halt in front of a little girl Kurt figured had to be none other than the infamous Maya.

She was beautiful: radiant and exotic-looking, with golden skin and eyes that glowed like honey in the warm sunlight. She grinned at Elliot, showing off two rows of tiny, pearly white teeth.

“Elly!” she squawked with delight. Kurt murmured a quiet _awww_ to himself as she adorably clutched Elliot’s hands in her own.

“Maya, are you _kidding_ me?”

All three of them turned to stare at the seething, breathless man who’d abruptly burst from the crowd to join their group. He stood with his hands on his hips, panting heavily, his focus entirely on the little girl whose beaming smile had totally vanished.

“Sorry, Daddy. But I saw Elly!”

 _Daddy._ The word clicked loudly in Kurt’s mind. He clamped his mouth shut, not trusting himself to keep from gaping at the man with delighted surprise. That’s her _dad_?!

He wasn’t that tall, Kurt observed, now that he’d let his shoulders slump with visible relief. And there was no way he was any older than Kurt’s twenty-five years.

 _Why the hell hasn’t_ this _guy been at any PTA meetings?_

From behind his dark lenses, Kurt let his gaze linger over the curves and angles of the man’s face: similarly olive-toned, like his daughter, with matching wild, curly hair and hazel eyes – though the man’s still flashed with remnants of panic.

“I don’t care! Don’t ever, _ever_ run away from me like that again!” His voice was textured with a light quaver that chipped tiny fractures into his words.

“Okay.” Kurt watched as Maya clung tighter to Elliot’s hands.

“It’s okay,” Kurt interjected with a polite smile, finally uncurling his fingers from Elliot’s backpack strap. “I had my eyes on them the whole time.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but the kids were safe, and Kurt wanted nothing more than to assuage this man’s still-palpable anxiety over nearly losing his daughter in a rowdy horde of unfamiliar faces. “I’m Kurt Hummel, Elliot’s dad.”

Blaine blinked at him once, twice, then shook his head, as if trying to clear away his last shreds of fear. “H-hi. Blaine Anderson.”

When Kurt took the hand Blaine offered, he could feel how it trembled under his hold, sending light tingles on a slow, delicious journey all the way up his arm. He squeezed Blaine’s hand firmly, reassuringly, reveling in the feel of rough palms and calloused fingers against his own smooth skin.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kurt breathed, his voice suddenly gone airy and too high. The heat from Blaine’s grip seeped into Kurt’s chest, sweeping the dust from a part of his heart he’d long ago locked up and abandoned. He was quickly in danger of melting, right there in the middle of Fifth Avenue, under Blaine’s molten gold stare.

“This is Elly, Daddy!” Maya’s voice burst up toward them, piercing the spell Blaine had cast over him.

 _Oh, right. Kids._ They both seemed to remember their children’s presence at the same time. Slowly, they released their handshake; the moment shifted awkward as Kurt realized how long they’d probably been standing there, frozen, holding hands and ogling each other.

Kurt tore his gaze away from Blaine’s and focused on the children beside them. He had to suppress an amused laugh when he took in Elliot’s expression: a simultaneous mix of guilt and pink-cheeked embarrassment over the nickname Maya had just announced – loudly – to the world.

“Nice to finally meet you, Elliot,” Blaine said, smiling warmly down at the boy and causing pleasant flutters to take flight in Kurt’s belly.

“Do you like my dress, Elly? I picked it out just for you!” Maya spun a little – a swirl of pink and green and chestnut curls. Elliot simply nodded, biting down on his bashful grin as he stared at her, enraptured.

Kurt was suddenly hyper-aware they were still standing in the street. People streamed all around them, cheering loudly and bumping against one another. “May I suggest we all get out of the road?” Kurt proposed, flinching as a nearly naked man knocked into his back. “We should find a place to watch the parade before all the good spots are gone.”

“Let’s go, Elly!” Maya pulled Elliot by the hand toward the sidewalk, nodding back at her father when he demanded she stay close in front of them.

Kurt kept his eyes fixed on the kids’ backs as they marched a few paces ahead. Blaine’s presence beside him filled his entire consciousness: the rhythmic sound of his now-calm breaths, the potent scent of soap and shampoo lingering like a warm halo around his body. Kurt bit his lip, searching his mind for something, _anything_ to say.

Moms, he could handle. Moms were easy to talk to, and they were _everywhere_ , penetrating every pore of Kurt’s life. Moms _loved_ Kurt: they thought he was sweet and adorable and the greatest man alive for being a single dad – and _gay_ , on top of that. They could commiserate with him over stomach bugs in one breath and prod him for style tips the next.

But he was pathetically out of practice conversing with men. When was he ever alone with another man, another dad? And a single, devastatingly handsome one at that – one who Kurt still held a grain of hope wasn’t at the pride parade simply so his daughter could attend a play date.

Thankfully, Blaine broke the silence between them. “Jesus, she’s gonna give me a heart attack one of these days.” He blew out a harsh breath. “ _Shit._ ”

“She seems like a bit of a firecracker,” Kurt observed.

“Yeah,” Blaine said through a laugh. “Sometimes... _headstrong_ , you could say.”

“Where’d she get that from?” Kurt dared to let his still-hidden eyes roam down Blaine’s frame once, taking in the way his faded purple t-shirt stretched perfectly over tanned, sinewy arms dusted with dark, coarse hairs. _Oh please, oh please be gay. Dear god._

The corners of Blaine’s mouth curved upward in a small, tight smile. “Certainly not me.”

Kurt hummed in consideration – a teasing, flirty sound, surprising himself with the confidence that had swooped in from nowhere to take over his thoughts and words. “I have to say, I thought Ell was exaggerating slightly when he told me Maya was ‘the most beautiful girl in the whole world,’” he quoted, and they both chuckled. “But he might have actually undersold her a bit. She’s a gorgeous little girl.”

Blaine’s smile perked up. “Thank you.” He shot Kurt a sideways glance that brimmed with significance, and _oh_ , there were those butterflies again, flitting against the walls of Kurt’s stomach and making him crave more.

Kurt paused, briefly mulling his next words before letting them slide off his tongue with a saucy smile. “And I can clearly see where she inherited _that_ from.”


	5. Getting To Know You

Blaine couldn’t help himself. He blinked at Kurt in surprise, just as he’d reacted when the man had introduced himself as Elliot’s father. His _father_. This lovely, effortlessly sophisticated man who’d stood out like a beam of light among a nameless mass of thousands was a young dad, just like Blaine.

He was also – _unquestionably_ – flirting with him.

Blaine wasn’t a stranger to romantic attention. He was a performer, after all, and met his fair share of eligible men through the theatre – men who promptly turned on their heels and darted in the opposite direction when they found out he had a child.

That minor detail wasn’t a turnoff here. Rather, it was the thread that tied him and Kurt together: strong, meaningful, immediate, with delicious dollops of attraction heaped on top.

Blaine offered Kurt the most dazzling grin he could manage. He made a point, then, to rake his gaze rather conspicuously down Kurt’s chest, taking in his crisp black waistcoat, dotted with a dozen tiny buttons down the center and topped off with a feather brooch soaked in a rainbow of saturated colors. 

“Elliot looks like he’s a chip off the old block,” Blaine remarked as he flicked his gaze back up to Kurt’s face. What color were his eyes, hidden behind those shades? Green, or maybe blue?

He leaned in closer, edging past the boundaries of Kurt’s personal space for just a moment, and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Don’t tell Maya I said this, but he’s the most well-dressed kid I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, I would _hope_ so,” Kurt huffed good-naturedly, a playful smirk still painted on his lips. “It’d be quite embarrassing for a fashion writer to have a frumpy kid.”

“Is that what you do?” Something akin to a hungry craving tumbled in Blaine’s gut as he asked the question. He wanted to learn more – _everything_ about Kurt Hummel. How did he spend his days? Where had he been hiding all this time, just out of Blaine’s sight?

Kurt nodded. “I write for _InStyle_? The magazine.”

“ _Hmmm._ ” Blaine made a mental note to add the magazine to his subscriptions when he got home that night. “That sounds interesting.”

“It is. I fancied myself at _Vogue_ for the longest time, but where I am now offers a lot of flexibility. I get to work from home sometimes, that sort of thing, so I can spend more time with Ell.” His voice turned wry. “Isn’t it funny how fast your dreams change when you have a kid? The publication on my business card doesn’t matter nearly as much as which employer has the best comp time policy.”

Blaine laughed in agreement. “You’re lucky. Our schedule is crazy, at best. What I wouldn’t give to have more free evenings with Maya. But that’s when people go to the theatre, so...”

Kurt’s eyebrows lifted a little, seemingly interested. “You’re what, an...an actor?”

Blaine nodded. “I actually have a matinee this afternoon, right after this.” He chuckled and rolled his eyes skyward, as if he could see his own frizzy curls sitting atop his head. “Gosh, I must look like such a mess next to you. I never bother fixing myself up before my shows.” Not that he’d had time this morning even if he’d wanted to, what with Maya dragging him by his belt loops out the door.

He swiped a hand through his hair in a vain attempt to tame the unruly mess. “I wish Maya would have told me we were meeting up with the most stylish father and son duo in New York,” he said, pairing the flattery with a coquettish smile aimed straight at Kurt.

“ _Blaine._ ” Kurt’s use of his name sent a quick, sudden shock up Blaine’s spine. “We are at the pride march. I’m just glad you don’t have a bleach-blond mohawk.” But Blaine didn’t miss the unmistakably pleased expression written all over his face.

“Right here, Dad?” Kurt turned his attention to Elliot as Blaine gave his hair one last self-conscious pat. The kids had found a clear spot against the guardrail separating the crowd from the street, and were already settling down onto a brightly colored beach towel Elliot had pulled from his backpack. 

“Perfect!” Kurt smiled fondly at his son before turning to look at Blaine again. “I’ve made Ell carry a backpack with all his _stuff_ since he was two. He thought I was letting him be such a big kid but really, I just didn’t feel like carrying around his damn diapers anymore.”

The image of Maya’s bulging, sparkly magenta bag hooked around his arm during countless errands and day trips flashed in Blaine’s mind. “That’s brilliant.”

“Isn’t it?” They both watched as Elliot reached into his backpack and pulled out two miniature rainbow flags, timidly offering one to Maya. 

He’d barely known the man a half-hour, but Blaine could already tell Kurt was one of those parents he envied: a cool, collected package tied up with a crisp, fashionable bow. Nothing like Blaine’s harried demeanor during his daily sprint between meals and musicals and meeting the nanny ten minutes late to drop Maya off.

“You’ll need to teach me more of your tricks,” Blaine murmured without thinking. His mouth promptly fell agape when his own words – well intentioned, but delivered like a terrible pickup line – reached his ears. He snapped his head to the side and came face-to-face with Kurt’s incredulous stare. Silence hung between them for one long, frozen moment until they both simultaneously dissolved into laughter.

“Sorry,” Blaine choked out. “I swear I didn’t mean it like that.”

The lulls that punctuated their conversation after that were no longer awkward, but instead filled with comfort and contemplation. They kept a sliver of distance between themselves and the kids beside them – still close enough to watch, but offering ample privacy so they could continue their flirty banter in peace.

“ _Elly_ ,” Kurt remarked with a chuckle after Maya shrieked Elliot’s name for the hundredth time that morning. “He doesn’t ever let me call him that. Not anymore, anyway.” Kurt’s voice turned soft, faraway. “I used to, when he was a baby. That was my mother’s name – Ellie. Well, Elizabeth. That’s where I got Elliot from.”

Blaine pursed his lips, pausing to glance over at Maya before deciding to share his own story. “I remember, I was reading _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_ in English class when we found out...” He trailed off as memories of that day flooded his vision – Santana’s panicked phone call that sent him bolting out the front doors of his school at ten-thirty in the morning; the ice-cold fear that set in his stomach when six separate pregnancy tests turned positive, one after another after another, right before their tear-filled eyes. “Maya Angelou had a baby when she was seventeen, too.”

Kurt nodded once – gracefully jutting his chin out, then lowering it down. His lips were curved in the barest hint of a knowing smile. Still he stayed turned away, seemingly focused on the kids as they chattered and giggled.

“I was eighteen,” he finally said, raising his face to look directly at Blaine. His voice was silky and intimate – a light sound that melded with the breeze and countered beautifully against the boisterous crowd. Blaine wanted to wrap himself in it, like a blanket that offered peaceful solace from worry and loneliness and the frantic pace of life.

Most days, Blaine thought he must be the only other single, twenty-something gay dad in all of New York City – hell, in the entire _world_. But now here was _Kurt_ , out of nowhere: dropped from the sky like some kind of angel and smiling at Blaine like he’d just found his own hidden treasure. What were the chances?  
The first booming, vibrant cheers suddenly rang out from the crowd, signaling the impending arrival of the parade. Kurt and Blaine slid closer to Maya and Elliot, caging their children safely between their legs and the metal barricade. Prickly waves of heat poured over Blaine’s body as Kurt’s shoulder pressed snugly against his own and stayed there: warm and solid and unyielding, like an anchor he could lean in to and hang on to to keep himself grounded.

“I’ve never actually been to this before,” Blaine confessed as a large roar went up around them when the mayor marched past.

Kurt hummed in response. “There might be a bit of...nudity,” he warned lamely.

Blaine’s gaze trailed after a man in a full-body mesh rainbow suit. “She saw me in _Cabaret_ last year.” He shrugged. “I’m not that worried.” They spent half their life in the theatre, after all. Maya was as used to seeing two men together as she was two women or a man and a woman. And the costumes…well, it was safe to assume she had an excellent grasp on human anatomy for a girl of her early age.

“I like bringing Ell here,” Kurt said absently as he watched parade-marchers stream past. “I don’t know that he really _gets_ it all yet, but it’s still a good experience, I think. I want him to see real people. People who probably struggle a heck of a lot more than we do. Show him that he should be proud we’re different. Or maybe that we’re not so different after all,” he added with a reflective tilt of his head.

Blaine felt Maya tug on the hem of his t-shirt. “Daddy, Daddy!”

“What?” He crouched down to better hear her over the racket.

Maya pointed a finger between the metal spokes of the guardrail, in the direction of a ecstatic-looking teenage girl wearing a sparkly purple gown and walking hand-in-hand with another dolled-up girl her age. “That’s the same girl that was in the _New York Times_ this morning! Because she couldn’t go to her...what’s it called? Where she gets to wear a pretty dress like that to school?”

“Her...prom?”

“Yeah! Her prom. They wouldn’t let her go with that girl.”

“Oh. Well that’s not very fair of them, is it?”

“No!” Maya threw an arm around Elliot’s shoulder. “Can I bring Elly to _my_ prom?”

Blaine sighed. He was _so_ not ready to think about seventeen-year-old Maya, towering over him in high heels as she kissed him goodbye and whisked out the door on the arm of a boy.

“You can go to your prom with whoever you want, Maya,” he replied in a weary voice.

She seemed satisfied with Blaine’s simple answer. Her arm stayed securely wrapped around Elliot’s shoulders as she watched more people flit by.

As he straightened back up, Blaine happened to catch the sunlight glint against the silver hands of his watch. How was it eleven already? He groaned to himself at the thought of leaving – abandoning this delightful morning, this safe cocoon within the buzzing crowd. Dragging his blissful daughter away from her friend – boyfriend, _whatever_. And leaving Kurt behind.

“I really need to get going to work here in a few,” Blaine said apologetically to Kurt.

“Oh.” Kurt’s mouth set in a small frown. “What show are you in, anyway?”

“ _Bye Bye Birdie_?”

Kurt’s eyebrows arched gracefully over the top of his sunglasses. “Off Broadway?”

“Yeah. You know it?”

“Yes! We keep up with all the shows that are running. Ell and I love going to the theatre.”

Blaine barely thought for a second before the words were spilling out of his mouth. “Well, I happen to know someone with connections who can get you into this afternoon’s show, if you’re interested.”

Kurt’s lips curled upward in a sly smile. “Do you, now?”

Blaine edged even closer, dropping his face downward and peering up at Kurt through his eyelashes. “Believe it or not, I have that kind of pull.”

Kurt burst with happy laughter, fueling an aching bruise in Blaine’s heart that he hadn’t been conscious of until that very morning. “That sounds wonderful, Blaine. Thank you.” Kurt paused for a moment to look down at the kids. “Why don’t you let me repay you by watching Maya? She can stay here with us till the parade’s over. Then we’ll all go up to your show.”

Blaine’s facial expression must have looked nothing short of astonished. “Seriously? You want to do that?”

“Of course! I mean, if you’re comfortable with it. I’d hate to pull them apart when they’re having so much fun.”  
“Yeah, but…she can be a bit of a handful,” Blaine cautioned.  
Kurt waved a dismissive hand. “Nonsense. She’s behaved wonderfully all morning. Ell and I will keep her in check. Really, it’s not a problem.”

With one last wary glance in Kurt’s direction, Blaine squatted down again to reach his daughter’s ear. “Hey, Maya? If I let you stay here with Elliot while I go to work, will you be on your best behavior?”

Her eyes positively lit up with joy. “Yes! Yes, Daddy! I promise, the best!”

“Okay. When the parade’s over, Mister Hummel is gonna bring you guys to the theatre so you can all watch my show.”

“Okay!”

Blaine pointed a finger up at Kurt, keeping his firm gaze locked on Maya’s. “Mister Hummel is in charge. You have to listen to everything he says. No fast moves like before, got it?”

She nodded once, firmly, before parroting, “Got it!”

“Because he’s going to have my number, and if you do anything wrong–”

“ _Daddy_ , oka-ay!”

Blaine shot her a small frown. “And keep your sass in check, too. Kiss,” he ordered. Maya turned her face, but not her eyes, away from the parade for the briefest moment to smack a wet kiss against his cheek. Blaine returned it, then another, and another, reveling in the feel of his lips against her impossibly soft skin. “Bye, baby.”

“Bye,” she said faintly, too engrossed in the parade to pay him a speck more attention.

Blaine stood back up to face Kurt, one hand still gripping Maya’s shoulder. “Um. Let me...let me give you my number. So you can get in touch with me in case...”

“Yeah. Yeah sure,” Kurt stammered, reaching into his back pocket. Moments after Blaine rattled off his number and Kurt tapped out the digits, Blaine’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

“That’s me,” Kurt said, smiling lightly as Blaine pulled out his phone.

“Great.” Blaine swallowed hard as he stared at the tiny digits on the screen. A foreign flutter of nerves wound around his lungs and coiled in his throat, leaving him breathing in shallow pants. “Show starts at two. It’s on West Fifty-fifth, but I’ll text you the exact address?”

“Sure. See you then. Break a leg,” Kurt tacked on, tossing Blaine a wave and one last beaming smile as he started to weave his way through the crowd.

_Kurt Hummel_. Blaine typed the name into his contacts as he strode toward the subway station wearing a goofy grin. His anxious breath escaped his body in a _whoop_ of glee when he realized it’d only be a few hours before he’d finally discover the mystery color of Kurt’s eyes.


	6. The Afternoon

Kurt had seen fireworks displays that weren’t quite as dynamic as Maya Anderson.

The beautiful young girl added a bright, shimmering spark of color to Kurt and Elliot’s normally placid routine. Whereas the father and son often exchanged words with just their gazes, Maya vocalized every thought, wish, and observation in an unfiltered stream of chatter.

“I’m hungry,” she announced abruptly as Kurt led the kids to Washington Square Park once the parade had finished marching through. They needed to work off the energy they’d stored up after standing in one place for hours, he decided; otherwise they’d never make it through Blaine’s show without some kind of meltdown.

“Elliot has snacks in his bag,” Kurt told her. “There’s carrots and raisins and cheese crackers.”

Kurt watched her eye a street vendor selling soft pretzels. “O- _kay_ ,” she said with a heavy sigh that contradicted her spoken word.

The three perched themselves on the concrete ledge of the fountain as the remnants of the parade crowd streamed around them, mixing and mingling with college students and street performers that infused their own unique hues into the colorful rabble.

The weather that day had turned out as perfect as Kurt could ever imagine. He turned his face upward, gazing at the clear, deep blue sky, tinted a gorgeous azure through his sunglasses. They’d have to move to the shade soon, before he and Elliot turned red as boiled lobsters. But for one brief moment, Kurt let himself revel in the feel of warm, crisp rays of sunshine against his skin, burning away the clouds of stress and doubt that always hovered just over his shoulder.

Because today was a day for happiness. Of that, somehow, he was sure.

“Here, Maya. Do you want a carrot?” Elliot offered her a single baby carrot he’d pulled from a small plastic bag. The gesture seemed to win Maya over on Kurt’s snack options. She grinned at him, plucking the proffered veggie from his hand and crunching down on it as loudly as she could, eliciting a laugh from Elliot.

They were adorable, the two of them together; still too close to babies for their “relationship” to be anything more than a sweet exchange of snacks and giggles and games. Their conversation ran the gamut from favorite books and movies to Maya’s gymnastics to Elliot’s love of drumming – “My Uncle Finn taught me. One time, he let me play with his band...it was _so cool_!” – and with the meal and the chitchat and their romantic spot in the park, it really was like a date.

_Glad one of us has an active love life, anyway._

“Mister Hummel?” Maya spoke politely.

“Yes, Maya?”

“Where did Elly’s mommy go?”

Kurt startled at her question. His gaze immediately darted toward Elliot, who was staring into the spray of the fountain in front of them. “She lives in Ohio,” Kurt answered cautiously, still keeping his eyes trained on his son’s blank face.

Maya perked up at that. “That’s where Gram and Pop-Pop live!”

“Are those Bl–your dad’s parents?”

“Uh huh! We went there for Christmas! It snowed a _lot_. We went sledding on a big hill–” one hand came up and zoomed through the air for emphasis “–like, _reallyreally_ fast, and it was _awesome_! And then we had a snowball fight, and I _won_.” She nodded once – an emphatic punctuation mark on her jubilant burst of memories.

“ _Hmmm._ ” Kurt’s mind flashed back to the snowy previous Christmas he and Elliot had spent at his parents’ house in western Ohio. They’d baked dozens of cookies together, promptly darting back to the warm, fire-lit living room with each new batch and curling together under piles of blankets to hide from the icy cold.

Was Blaine from Ohio, too? Had he and Maya been close by – strangers passing, unknown; not yet scheduled to meet on this wild, unpredictable train of life?

“I never met anybody else who just has a daddy until I met Elly,” Maya told him. “Well, I _have_ a mommy. But she doesn’t live around here. I haven’t seen her since before I can even remember.”

Kurt always kept his focus grounded in the present and trained on the future, rather than glancing in the rearview at his past. That part of his life was unchangeable, permanently etched into time. But Maya’s words filled him with an insatiable curiosity. He was dying to know – what was Blaine’s backstory? Was it possibly similar to his own: a closeted kid who took his cover up one gigantic, irreversible step too far?

How hard was it for Blaine, Kurt wondered, raising a daughter without a partner? Did he have family nearby? Close friends? Neighbors who took Maya in for evenings while he escaped to the stage, pursuing his passions and pretending to be somebody else for a few blessed hours?

“My mommy’s name is Santana,” Maya continued without pause. “What’s Elly’s mommy’s name?”

Kurt didn’t answer right away. He didn’t want to talk about this – not now, not ever again, really, but especially not here, on this beautiful day with the summer sun melting away all his worries.

“Brittany,” he finally replied, only because the silence had stretched too long.

“Does Elly ever see her?”

Both Kurt and Elliot responded in unison. “No.”

She smiled at Elliot, and they shared a glance Kurt recognized as one of unity – finally finding someone who was just like you after a long, hard search. He knew it because he’d seen the same look staring back at him from one Blaine Anderson just two short hours ago.

Maya was quiet for only a moment. “Santana ran away to Europe,” she sighed dramatically, sounding eerily like an adult trapped in a seven year old’s body. “I don’t think Daddy likes her very much. But Daddy doesn’t like _any_ girls. He likes other boys.” She shot Kurt a grin, and instantly the spirited little girl was back beside him. “Like you!” she whispered loudly, giggling like it was the most amusing joke ever told.

“Ooo- _kay_ , guys,” Kurt sang, clapping his hands once to halt Maya’s endless stream of too-much-information in its tracks. His cheeks felt flushed; whether it was from the sun or the final, glorious confirmation that _Blaine is actually gay, thank god_ , Kurt couldn’t tell. “I’m gonna move this pow-wow to that bench over there in the shade. Why don’t you two run around for a little while before we have to get going?”

“Okay!” Maya bolted up first, skipping on long, tanned legs toward the bench. Elliot hung back, slowly gathering the remnants of their snacks and returning them to his backpack. Kurt waited for him to finish cleaning up before joining his lazy pace toward where Maya was sitting.

“Hey.” He nudged Elliot’s shoulder with his hip, trying to get his son to smile. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Uh huh.”

“You know I love you.”

A shrug. “I know.”

“As much as two parents in one body.”

A minute twitch at one corner of his lips. “I know.”

“Maybe as much as three parents. Four! Ten! A hundred!”

Elliot giggled then, and Kurt breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Elliot knew his story; he knew he was enveloped in love and support from his family: Kurt, Finn and Rachel, even Kurt’s parents, five hundred miles away. But still – he was only seven. Still so young, and prone to confusion and bouts of sulkiness.

Kurt gave his shoulders a gentle push. “Go have fun with your girlfriend. It’s almost time to go.” And he laughed in spite of himself as Elliot promptly began chasing after Maya, whose long, dark curls flowed out from under the hat she’d stolen from his head and placed atop her own.

On their way out of the park twenty minutes later, Kurt caved and bought them a smoky, steaming hot pretzel to share before he hailed a cab. Kurt considered himself somewhat fearless, but even he wasn’t going to attempt subway travel with two seven-year-olds in tow.

True to his word, Blaine had sent Kurt a text message with the address of the theatre. “One thirty-one West Fifty-fifth,” Kurt recited to the cabbie, and they were off: slowly crawling, then speeding, then crawling, then speeding toward their destination.

_Kurt Hummel: Thanks! On our way!_

_Blaine Anderson: She behave ok?_

Kurt started typing out a response, but quickly deleted it; instead, he snapped a picture of the two kids beside him in the backseat, wearing matching hammy grins and clutching each side of what remained of their pretzel.

_Kurt Hummel: See for yourself! She’s wonderful. We had a great time_

_Blaine Anderson: Thx, I owe you one_

_Kurt Hummel: No you don’t. But if you insist, that’s a debt I’d be happy to collect_

_Blaine Anderson: ;)_

Anticipation drummed a steady beat in Kurt’s throat by the time they finally reached the theatre. He couldn’t wait to see Blaine again – and on stage, completely transformed from the man he’d met on the street that morning. Was he a good actor? What part did he play? Could he sing? _Oh god, what if he_ sings _?_ That would be like icing on the cake – if Blaine could possibly be any sweeter, any more mouth-watering.

“I love this show!” Maya announced as they made their way inside. “It’s my favorite one Daddy’s ever been in. And I’ve seen them _all_.”

“What part does he play?” Kurt asked as he handed their tickets to an usher.

“He’s Conrad Birdie!” she exclaimed, and Kurt lifted an eyebrow in surprise. He hadn’t expected Blaine would play such a significant role. “All the girls love him and sing to him.” A silly laugh bubbled up from deep in her chest. “It’s funny because he actually loves _boys_.”

_Well, at least she can already appreciate irony._

As they settled into their seats, Kurt flipped through his Playbill, quickly finding the actor bios page. His mouth curved into a happy grin when his eyes fell on Blaine’s picture. He was just so damn _handsome_. Even in the tiny, black-and-white photo, Blaine’s eyes, his smile looked so warm and welcoming – like a man Kurt would dream of, if he ever let himself dream about those sorts of things.

Kurt’s gaze dipped down to devour the bio printed under his picture.

 _Blaine is thrilled to join the cast of_ Bye Bye Birdie _in the title role of Conrad Birdie. Prior to this role, Blaine appeared in productions of_ Cabaret, Rent, Hairspray _and more. Blaine is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he received his B.F.A. in Theatre. He’d like to dedicate his performance to the love of his life, Maya, who inspires him every day to be a better man._

If Kurt thought he’d been in danger of melting earlier, his heart was now little more than an incinerated pile of dust.

Kurt had seen the musical before, of course. But there was no way he could have prepared himself for the sight of Blaine when he appeared in the center of the stage, bathed in the spotlight and clothed from head to toe in a shiny, skin-tight gold suit – a suit that, Kurt realized as Blaine started thrusting his hips in time with the music, left _nothing_ to the imagination.

Kurt snapped his jaws shut, hoping nobody had noticed him gaping like a fish out of water. He swallowed hard, trying to clear away the dry lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. But the inside of his mouth still tingled – oh god, he was actually _salivating_ at the sight of Blaine, with his formerly untamed hair now smoothed and styled into a perfect, shiny pompadour. He smirked wickedly as he belted out the rollicking fifties tune – and _oh_ , his _voice_. It was smooth and pleasing as honey, with a smattering of sexy growls scattered throughout.

“That’s my Daddy!” Kurt heard Maya whisper to Elliot.

 _Shit._ It was a slap of a reminder that he was sitting next to children – _his_ child, _Blaine’s_ child. _Stop gawking!_

Kurt ducked his head and turned his wide-eyed gaze toward Elliot and Maya, both sitting to his left. They were completely engrossed in the scene, grinning brightly as they watched the mass of shrieking, swooning high school girls dance around Blaine while he sang his silly song.

Elliot’s eyes briefly veered over to Kurt. “Why are you staring at me?” he murmured loudly.

“Just...making sure you’re enjoying the show,” Kurt croaked.

Somehow, he made it through to the end of the musical – only to go weak in the knees once again when Blaine caught his gaze during the final curtain call and shot him a wink.

The text came barely a minute after the stage had cleared.

_Blaine Anderson: I’ll only b 15 min!_

_Kurt Hummel: We’ll be here!_

Kurt couldn’t stop the warm smile that spread over his face when, exactly fifteen minutes later, Blaine burst into the theatre from a side door and hoisted a squealing Maya up in his arms. “Hi, baby,” Kurt heard him say as he crushed her in a tight embrace – just the same way his soft, loving voice gently squeezed around Kurt’s heart.

It clenched impossibly tighter when Blaine reached down to ruffle Elliot’s hair. “Hey, Ell,” Blaine greeted him amiably, as if he hadn’t just met the boy that morning. “Where’d your hat go?”

“It’s on my seat. Dad said I couldn’t wear it during the show.”

“Ah.” Blaine finally fixed his gaze on Kurt, then, and grinned so hugely that Kurt wanted to sink down into his seat and sigh. Blaine set Maya back on her feet before closing the distance between them, plopping into the seat she had occupied during the show.

“Blue,” Blaine said, quite randomly; a smile still lingered on his mouth. He grabbed Elliot’s hat from the empty seat between them and twirled it in his hands.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your eyes.” Blaine placed the hat atop his damp, dark hair, which he’d neatly parted and gelled so it lay flat over his head. “They’re blue.”

A sudden punch of prickly, anxious heat shot up from Kurt’s stomach and exploded in the center of his chest. “They are.”

“You were wearing sunglasses earlier, so I couldn’t see them. I guessed they might be green, but...” Blaine leaned into the armrest and propped his chin on the heel of his hand. Deliberately, he paused to stare into Kurt’s eyes – deeply, as if he were looking beyond Kurt’s face, far past the color, all the way to his soul. “They’re blue.”

“Oh.” _Can. Not. Breathe._ Kurt couldn’t even move – he just sat there, rigid, frozen with disbelief that Blaine was real and this was actually happening.

Blaine let the silence linger for a moment before speaking again. “So, how’d you like the show?” he asked.

The indelible, positively _glorious_ image of Blaine in his gold suit immediately flashed in front of Kurt’s vision. “Good,” he squeaked as a bright, hot flush of color rose high in his cheeks. He cleared his throat before continuing. “I was impressed with your…performance.” _Oh, god._

Blaine laughed. “I know, it’s kind of a silly show. But it’s cool to do something that’s a little more family-friendly.” He watched Kurt for one more long moment before suddenly reaching over and placing his free hand on Kurt’s arm. “Hey, come out with us to eat. We always go for an early dinner between the two shows before Maya’s nanny picks her up to bring her home.”

“Oh…oh, no,” Kurt answered automatically, shaking his head. “I…we’ve already taken up your entire day. I don’t want to intrude...”

“Kurt.” Blaine gave him a _look_ : his hat-capped head hung, and dark eyes peering up through long, feathery lashes. “Come on.”

He was irresistible. “Okay,” Kurt agreed.

They got up and corralled the kids, then led them out of the theatre back to the sunny world outside.

“So, random question,” Kurt began, slipping on his sunglasses as they walked down the bustling sidewalk. “Are you by any chance from Ohio?”

Blaine shot him a surprised glance. “Yeah?”

Kurt smiled at him. “I grew up in Lima.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he repeated with a single nod of his head.

Blaine grinned at him, open-mouthed and incredulous. “I’m from Westerville!”

 _Not even two hours away._ Where had this man _been_ all Kurt’s life?

“Maya said you guys visited your parents there for Christmas last year. So I’ve sort of been wondering all afternoon.”

Blaine’s brow creased with confusion. “Why was she talking about that?”

“Oh. Well...” Kurt took a deep breath, suddenly nervous to reveal a part of himself he’d left far, far behind. He kept his voice low so the kids wouldn’t overhear. “She was asking about Ell’s mom, and I told her how she lives in Ohio. And it sort of just flowed from there.”

“Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry.” Blaine’s eyes were wide and apologetic – and gold, _so_ gold, glowing in the sun like they had life of their own. “She shouldn’t have been prying like that. I’ll make sure to talk to her later–”

“No, no, it’s okay. She’s certainly not the first to ask!” Kurt pursed his lips, pausing for a moment as he wondered whether or not to press on. “I think it’s good, actually,” he finally decided to say. “For them to spend time together, and learn about each other. It’s hard to be the only one who...” Kurt trailed off when it hit him that he wasn’t just talking about Elliot and Maya.

The look he and Blaine shared at that moment brought Kurt straight back to the park, to his spot in the sun, where he’d sat with their children and watched them connect in a way Kurt had never been confident he and Elliot would ever do.

Kurt pierced the ripe silence with a light, nervous laugh. “Although it did make _me_ curious. About…about you.”

Blaine’s gaze darted toward Maya, who was walking with Elliot just a few steps ahead of them. He opened his mouth to speak, glancing back at Kurt before finally letting his words spill out. “Um, so, I have to get back to the theatre after this for the evening show. But maybe when I’m done, you might want to meet me somewhere? We could, like, talk a little more.” A pause. “You know, without the kids around.”

_omg_

_He just asked me out on a date. Didn’t he. Didn’t he?_

“Y-yeah, yeah.” Kurt stumbled over the words in his rush to accept. “That sounds great. I’ll just…I’ll have to find someone to watch Ell, though.” His mind was already racing to come up with a babysitter.

“Oh, right.” Blaine’s whole face creased with a frown. “It’s okay if you can’t. We could, maybe, do it some other time or something…”

“No! No.” Kurt waved his hands in front of him. “I have someone. He’ll do it. It’s...it’s okay. Tonight is okay. Perfect,” he immediately corrected himself, then grinned, mirroring Blaine’s happy expression.

“Perfect,” Blaine echoed.


	7. The Babysitters

_Beep!_

“Finn, I know Rachel’s in a show tonight and you’re sitting at home by yourself in your underwear watching _Transformers_ – or _lord_ knows what else – so get your ass over to my apartment and babysit Ell for me so I can go out to dinner with a man for the first time in a year!”

***

Blaine was pretty sure the nervous tingles that kept blooming and surging in his chest had nothing to do with the fact he was about to go out on stage and perform in front of a full house, and everything to do with the fact that he wanted said show to be _over, now_ , so he could fly out the stage door and meet up with a beautiful blue-eyed man for dinner.

Or, maybe, because he was in the middle of telling his daughter about his plans to go out on a date with Kurt Hummel.

“So does that mean you _like_ him?”

Blaine had never done this. Never sat his daughter down and told her about his personal life beyond the vague, _“I know most boys like girls, but I actually like other boys.”_ It had never been worth it before, with the few pathetic attempts at dating he’d scattered across their years together.

He was probably crazy – he’d only just met Kurt this morning, after all – but for some reason, Blaine thought this time might be worth it.

“ _Yeah..._ ” In practice, the conversation was turning out a heck of a lot more awkward than he had ever imagined. “You could say that.”

Maya was quiet, as if she was pondering the idea of her father liking somebody romantically – somebody she’d met in the flesh, rather than the abstract image of a _boy_ she’d created her mind.

“I like him, too,” she finally declared. “He’s nice and cool. And he’s really pretty, just like Elly.”

Blaine blew out a breath he had no idea he’d been holding. It was vital, he realized in that moment, that Maya liked whomever he dated. He couldn’t ever try to bring somebody into the fold of their tiny family without her stamp of approval – which wasn’t something she handed out easily. The fact that Kurt had received it so soundly fueled another blossom of warm, anxious joy in the pit of Blaine’s stomach.

He was about to tell her exactly that when a light rap at the door interrupted them.

“Hey, chica!” Amanda greeted Maya brightly as she poked her head into Blaine’s dressing room.

“Amanda!” Maya’s entire face lit up when she saw her nanny step into the room. She jumped up from the ratty, overstuffed red couch where she’d been sitting with Blaine, abandoning their intimate conversation in favor of throwing her arms around the young woman’s waist. Blaine chuckled as he watched Maya squeeze with as much strength as her little arms could muster. “I had the best day of my whole entire _life_ today!” she said, her enthusiastic words muffled by the fabric of Amanda’s flowy white top.

“Wow!” Amanda exclaimed as she returned Maya’s embrace. “You better tell me all about it on the train ride home. But lemme talk to your dad super quick first, okay?”

“Okay!” Maya ran back to the couch and plopped down on her butt, picking up the book she’d dropped to the wayside when Blaine had sat down with her to talk.

When Blaine approached Amanda, she greeted him with the same friendly, toothy smile she always wore. Amanda had been Maya’s nanny since September – just one in a long line of women young and old who’d helped care for Maya during the past seven years. But Amanda was far and away the Andersons’ favorite. The bubbly, strawberry blonde NYU senior was more like Maya’s friend than her babysitter, frequently taking her shopping for clothes or out for a movie and a late-evening snack. Blaine didn’t know what he’d do without Amanda’s help four nights a week.

“So you’ll be home around eleven as usual?” she asked Blaine.

“Actually…” Blaine looked at her guiltily. “I’m going to be a few hours late tonight, if that’s okay.”

“Oh?” Amanda’s bangle bracelets clinked wildly as she placed one hand on her hip and raised a single pale eyebrow with intrigue.

“Yeah. I have...” Blaine actually had trouble spitting out the word through the grin that suddenly threatened to split his face in two. “I have a date.”

“ _Rreeaaally?_ ” She shot him a roguish grin. “Well, it’s about time! You are far too delicious to go to waste.”

He was sure he was grinning like an utter fool now. “Yeah, he’s...his name is Kurt. He’s really, just, kind and funny and we have all these weird coincidences in common...”

“And he’s cute, too, I hope,” Amanda added with a wink.

Blaine thought of Kurt’s eyes, how they sparkled like some kind of rare blue crystal in the dim theatre; how his own heart raced and begged for more when Kurt smiled at him as they exchanged flirty banter, natural and effortless like they’d known each other for years instead of hours. “Yeah,” he sighed dreamily.

Amanda laughed at him. “Boy, you already look like you’re smitten with this guy! Where’d you meet him?”

“At the pride parade this morning? Oh, that’s the best part. He’s a dad, too. Maya had a _date_ with his son today.” Blaine rolled his eyes as he said the word.

“Oh, you mean Elly?”

Her question instantly wiped Blaine’s goofy smile away. “You know about Elliot?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” she answered, as if the entire _world_ knew. “For like two weeks now.”

Blaine frowned. “She only told me about him yesterday.”

“Well, you know we have our little girl talks.” Amanda shrugged. “Maybe she was more comfortable telling me first.”

Blaine’s frown threatened to deepen to a pout. “But…she always tells me everything.”

Amanda winced at him, as if she knew she was about to hurt his feelings. “Blaine, there’s just some things girls don’t want to talk about with their dads.”

Of course. He knew that. It was important – _critical_ – for Maya to have a female presence in her life, someone she could trust and confide in. But she was only seven. Still his baby girl. Did she already need more than he could give her?

He was still standing in place, but all of a sudden Blaine felt winded. His life up to this point had been a race; now he’d stopped to catch his breath, only to see Maya sprinting far ahead, out of his reach.

Blaine forced himself to shake it off. It was just a silly childhood crush, and she had told him…eventually. “Thanks for being there for her, Amanda,” he said, pushing the corners of his mouth up in a smile that he hoped looked genuine, because he meant every word. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it. Appreciate you.”

“It’s my pleasure, boss. You know I love her. So don’t worry about us tonight – I’ll stay as late as you need me. I have some reading to finish, anyway.” With one last smile, Amanda turned to reach out a hand to Maya. “Okay, girlie. Time go to home. We’re going to make popcorn and then you are going to spill _all_ about your date. I want details.”

Maya blushed – actually _blushed_ – and nodded shyly. “Okay. Bye, Daddy!”

Blaine sighed when the door closed behind them. It’d only be another blink of an eye before Maya would be all grown up. She’d be going on dates with lots of boys – _real_ ones, not just a cute seven year old she liked to squeal and hold hands with. She wouldn’t need a nanny anymore, and she definitely wouldn’t want to hang out in her father’s dressing room between shows, reading novels and describing to him every fact and detail about the plot.

But Blaine still had a lot of years left to care for her, to nourish her needs and provide her with the best life he could offer. And along with Maya’s life, he needed to look out for his own, too. Because change also meant there were new things awaiting him – things that made his pulse pound with excitement and hope, not just pangs of wistful sadness. Things that could shape and grow his life outside of his role as a dad.

The grin snuck back onto Blaine’s face when he thought about Kurt again. Twenty-four hours ago, he hadn’t even known the man existed; now he could barely think of anything else. And in just four more, they’d be sitting across from one another, sharing a meal and drinks, and Blaine would get to dig deeper, uncovering new gems in the treasure trove he’d seemingly stumbled upon.

But first, he still had to get through his damn show.

***

“Dude. I wasn’t in my underwear,” Finn insisted as he strode unannounced through the front door of Kurt’s apartment, holding an enormous box of pizza.

Kurt immediately stopped pacing his well-worn path across the floor. “I don’t need the details,” he said, holding up a hand to keep Finn from elaborating. He eyed the pizza box Finn threw down on the kitchen table. “I have food here, you know. I was going to leave you money to order something.”

“You know I don’t want your money.” Finn flipped open the lid and pulled out a monster slice of pepperoni, scarfing half of it down in one bite. “ _Sfo, a daye_?” he asked, his voice muffled by his full mouth.

Kurt paused for a moment to peer through narrowed eyes at his stepbrother: nothing more than an overgrown teenager, still boyish and awkward and too tall, wearing the same jeans-and-plaid-buttondown combo that had been his staple since high school.

“ _God_ , hasn’t Rachel taught you any manners?” Kurt shook his head and made a sound of disgust. “Just please do me a favor and try not to pass on your barbaric eating habits to my son, would you?”

Finn swallowed before speaking again. “Okay. Anything else you want to bitch me out about before you go?”

Kurt briefly let his eyelids slip shut, then blew out a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just – I’m a little nervous right now. You know I haven’t... _dated_ anyone in a really long time. I only just met this guy today, but I _really_ like him. He’s sweet and he’s talented and _god_ , he’s gorgeous.” He was vaguely aware that his words were running together as he rambled, but he had to get his thoughts _out_. He’d been stewing here for an hour now, with nerves and doubt and giddy glee tumbling through his body.

Kurt sunk down into one of the four chairs lining the edge of the dining table. “I mean, I’m pretty _sure_ it’s a date. He asked me to meet him so we could talk more. Without the kids around. That sounds like a date, doesn’t it?”

Finn swallowed his second mouthful of pizza and quirked a shoulder. “Yeah. I guess so.” Then he took another giant bite from his slice.

Kurt stared up at him, his jaw hanging open with incredulity. “ _Finn!_ Were you even _listening_ to me?” He tapped his blunt fingernails against the small space of tabletop not covered by greasy cardboard. “I’m kinda freaking out here!”

“Kurt, relax. It’s just dinner or whatever. People go out to dinner all the time.”

“Not me,” Kurt muttered. “Not people with seven year olds.”

“Yeah. Speaking of that. How’d you manage to bag a date, anyway, Mister ‘There’s-not-a-man-in-New-York-who’ll-date-a-single-dad-so-why-even-bother-looking?’” Finn waggled his head back and forth as he spoke, attempting a poor imitation of Kurt’s high-pitched voice.

It earned him a vicious glare. “I met him at the parade this morning. He’s the dad of Ell’s…Ell’s _girlfriend_.”

“He’s a gay dad, too? Weird.” Finn chewed silently for a moment before his eyes suddenly grew big. “Wait, Ell has a girlfriend?”

Kurt shrugged. “She’s not, like, a _real_ girlfriend. They’re only seven y—”

“Dude!” Finn exclaimed, speaking over Kurt as Elliot ventured out of his bedroom. “You’ve got a girlfriend?”

Elliot froze in his tracks. His eyes were wide, like a deer in headlights.

“O- _kay_ , well, seems like you can take over things from here.” Kurt lifted himself up from his seat. “I’m going to get going, Ell. Make sure to tell Uncle Finn all about our day with Maya.”

Elliot didn’t respond. He eyed Kurt curiously as he pulled an oversized gray blazer out of their tiny front closet. “Where are you gonna go, Dad?”

“Back to the city. I’m just having dinner with Maya’s dad, like I told you. And then I’ll come straight home.” Kurt wrapped a light silk scarf around his neck and examined his outfit, his hair, his teeth in the mirror one last time before walking over to Elliot and sweeping him into a tight embrace. “I won’t be too late. I promise.” He bent down and kissed his son’s baby-soft cheek. “I love you.”

When he straightened back up again, Kurt turned on his heels and pointed a single finger in Finn’s face. “Oh, yeah. And _don’t_ play drums on my Tupperware,” he warned. “The downstairs neighbors cursed me out last time. If it happens again, I’ll be sure to give them your number instead.”

Finn threw one hand up in surrender as he polished off the slice of pizza in his other. “ _Ooo-fay_ ,” he promised, his voice once again smothered by his full mouth. “Hey. _Goo ruck_.”

Kurt managed a small, amused smile. “Thanks, Finn.”

With one last wave to Elliot, Kurt breezed out the door. Butterflies quickly took flight in his stomach as he descended the stairs and headed out into the deep, bustling night.


	8. The Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the fashion-minded among you...[check out my Tumblr](http://leepbc14.tumblr.com/post/23522822097/so-i-just-assembled-kurts-outfit-for-his-date) for the outfit I assembled for Kurt!

“Hi.”

The feeling rushed back as soon as Blaine spotted Kurt standing on the brightly lit sidewalk outside the stage door, biting his bottom lip as he watched for Blaine’s figure to exit the theatre. It was like a thousand frantic butterflies had emerged from their hidden cocoons and all tried to fly at once, bumping against Blaine’s stomach and his windpipe and his heart. They threatened to burst through his skin and soar up, up to the stars when the two locked eyes and Kurt beamed at him, then offered his simple greeting.

“Hey.” Blaine’s voice was breathless, revealing his anxiety, and the way he’d sprinted through his post-show routine so he could get here – right here, in front of Kurt. _Finally_.

He tried, _so_ hard, not to leer when he let his gaze drop down the front of Kurt’s body. Kurt had changed clothes since Blaine last saw him that afternoon. Now he wore dark, slim jeans – perfectly molded to his thighs and hemmed to end at a precise length against lighter-toned denim lace-ups – and a gray blazer that did nothing to hide his strong, toned arms. A navy silk scarf with pastel print – skulls, McQueen; Blaine knew _something_ about designer fashion – gave his outfit the perfect touch of personality.

All traces of the casual, effortlessly stylish dad Blaine met that morning had vanished. This was a man: urban and chic and independent, someone who knew exactly how to make himself look good. Who was trying to look his best. For _Blaine_. For their date together.

“You look fantastic.”

“Thank you.” Kurt’s upturned lips twitched with amusement. “I like your bow tie.”

Instinctively, Blaine’s hand went to the navy bow tie at his neck – the one he’d had to re-tie twice in his dressing room, just five minutes earlier, because his trembling fingers wouldn’t cooperate. “Too much?” he asked, wrinkling his nose self-deprecatingly.

Kurt simply shook his head: slow, exaggerated swings back and forth, with his eyes fixed on Blaine’s the entire time. “So, where to?”

Blaine knew the place. He’d been there twice with some of his fellow cast members after their shows. He’d stored it in the back of his mind as the perfect spot to bring a date, if he ever got the chance.

Kurt was his chance.

“Like Spanish?”

“As long as there’s no kids menu in sight.”

Blaine grinned. “No kids tonight. Just us. Follow me.” He dared to place a hand at the small of Kurt’s back and push, ever so lightly, guiding Kurt in the direction of his own movement down the sidewalk. The contact of his rough skin against soft, warm fabric was brief, but left a scalding burn on Blaine’s palm that he clutched in his fist as they walked.

They strolled together over eight blocks, light conversation and jovial chuckles peppering their journey, until they reached the tiny tapas lounge with its quiet, charming back patio that belied its location just blocks from bustling Times Square. It looked exactly the way Blaine remembered it – even better, actually, because now Kurt was in it.

They sat at a table in the back corner, ensconced in the vaguely humid air of that balmy June night, sharing plates of chorizo and clams and shrimp and stuffed mushrooms, and a seemingly bottomless pitcher of fruity, ruby-red sangria.

“So I don’t meet many dads like you,” Blaine began, breaking a lull in their banter with what he hoped was a smooth opening to the talk he was dying to have.

“Like me?”

“Yup.”

Kurt’s eyes were a prism of blue and green and gray and gold in the soft, sparkling glow of fairy lights strung around the garden’s perimeter. “How so?”

Blaine shot him a knowing look. “Come on.”

An adorably coy smile played on Kurt’s lips. “I have no earthly idea what you mean, Blaine. Please, tell me…” He propped his chin on his hand and leaned forward, closer to the flicker of candlelight in the middle of their table. “What am I like?”

Blaine inhaled a shallow breath. “You know. Another single dad my age.”

“ _Mmmhmmm?_ ” Kurt’s light, teasing murmur prodded him to elaborate.

“Who’s…like me.” Why was it so difficult to form words? Was it the effect of the alcohol flowing warm through his veins? Or was it those damn eyes on him, piercing through him, fueling his adrenaline and stealing his ability to think?

Kurt arched a questioning eyebrow. “You mean, dads who bring their young children to gay pride parades?”

Blaine opened his mouth to respond, but his intended words somehow morphed into a burst of laughter. “Yes,” he said with a nod.

Kurt hummed again, cocking his head and letting his gaze roam over Blaine’s face. “If I recall, you only went because my son invited your daughter.”

“Yes. Well, you know. The point is…ah…”

“Blaine?”

“Yeah?”

“Breathe.”

Blaine laughed, blowing out a short, quick puff of air. “Jesus. Why is this so hard?”

“Well, if you’re anything like me – which, I’m pretty sure you were just trying to tell me I am –” Kurt winked at him, setting another round butterflies free inside Blaine’s gut “– it’s because you haven’t been out on a date in, oh, maybe a year? And you can’t remember how to talk to another adult about anything but what a rip-off babysitters are.”

Blaine couldn’t help himself – he grinned, hugely, until his cheeks ached. “Aren’t they, though?”

“It’s the biggest scam in the city. They make ten dollars an hour to sit and watch _The Real Housewives_ while Ell snores in bed.”

“Ten? Try twenty!”

“Twenty!” Kurt clucked his tongue. “You’re being taken for a ride, Mister Anderson.”

They both laughed together, the merry sounds of their voices mingling over their little table. But Blaine kept grinning at Kurt as he reached for his sangria.

“What?” Kurt queried, pulling his glass from his lips after taking a long, slow sip.

“What you said.”

Kurt’s eyes rolled upward as he searched his memory. “What did I say?”

“That we’re on a date.”

Instantly, Kurt’s characteristically cool composure vanished. “Oh. Did I say that?” he asked, his eyes growing huge and round.

“You did.”

“I-I mean, if-f you want it to be…” he stuttered, a rosy blush blooming on his pale cheeks. He looked exactly how Blaine felt, and for the first time that day, Blaine wondered if Kurt was experiencing the same wild, nervous flutter of butterflies inside his own chest.

“Kurt.”

Kurt snapped his mouth shut, staring quietly, intently at Blaine with those eyes: big and clear and blue-green and gorgeous in the candlelight. How in the world could Blaine _not_ want to date him?

“I definitely want it to be.”

“Okay.” A beat. Then he smiled – slowly, until it filled his entire face. “Good.”

“I just thought it was cute when you said it,” Blaine admitted as he reached for his drink, gripping the cool, smooth glass in his palm. He needed to hold on to something, because he was dangerously close to lunging over the table and clinging rather embarrassingly to Kurt. He somehow managed to take another sip of sangria through his goofy grin, enjoying the delicious, sweet-and-tangy explosion of flavor on his taste buds. It was so good. Everything was so damn good right now.

“But there’s just one thing,” Blaine added as he rolled a wine-soaked apple cube around his tongue.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t believe for a second that you haven’t been on a date in a year.”

Kurt barked out a laugh. “Oh, I swear it. The last date I went on was last summer. One and done. Men...” he trailed off, shaking his head. “They don’t want to date a single dad.”

“I have the same problem. Guys I meet, they...you can see the fear in their eyes when you tell them you have a kid.” Blaine imitated a look he’d received once: a quick, wide-eyed flash of panic, then a slow turn of his face down and away.

Kurt threw his head back and laughed in agreement. “I know! It’s like telling them you have an STD or something.” He chuckled again, then gave a little shrug of his shoulders. “So for the most part I just don’t...I guess I kinda don’t bother? I don’t…I would rather not deal with the rejection.” He shook his head determinedly. “I don’t deserve that. Ell doesn’t either. I’m used to it being just the two of us, anyway. I’m happy with how things are.” But the way he smiled after he said it, far weaker than he had all day, told Blaine that, maybe, he wasn’t.

Blaine couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer. “Tell me about...how you wound up with Elliot?”

Kurt was quiet for a long time, gnawing nervously at the corner of his mouth as he poked at a lone mushroom with his fork. “I was eighteen when Elliot was born, like I told you,” he finally said, his gaze still fixed on his plate. “My senior year of high school, I was still trying to…I don’t know…hide myself from the world. Everybody knew I was gay. I mean, it was Ohio; there weren’t any other boys like me in my town. But I didn’t want to...I couldn’t come out and say it. Because then all those... _names_ they called me? They’d be real.

“So I just...I told myself I would wait until after I graduated, and then I could escape. I was dying to come here. Somewhere people wouldn’t care what I wore, or what my voice sounded like. But still…getting through each day there was...hard. Seemingly never-ending.”

Blaine bit down lightly on the tip of his tongue, forcing himself to keep from interrupting Kurt with a million questions. He was fascinated to hear Kurt’s story, already unfurling in a way that was eerily similar to his own.

“There was this girl, Brittany. She was a cheerleader. She…” Kurt’s face ducked lower, further away from Blaine’s stare, and his teeth worked at his lower lip for a moment before he continued. “She offered to hook up with me because she had, and I quote, a ‘perfect record’ with all the guys in the senior class that she didn’t want to ruin before we graduated. I figured being on her conquest list could only help me.” Kurt laughed humorlessly. “Stupid, huh?”

The only response Blaine gave was in his expression, softening with compassion and understanding. But Kurt never saw it; he carried right on, as if he couldn’t stop the flood of words now that Blaine had poked a hole in the dam that kept them locked inside.

“Brittany wasn’t the brightest girl. Apparently – this is what she told me – she confused her birth control with, I don’t know, Pez or some candy. It was the only time I–” Kurt suddenly stopped short and flicked his gaze up to meet Blaine’s. It was like an invisible sheath had been pulled from in front of his eyes. Raw, intense emotions swam in those pools of blue, and Blaine dove in without hesitation. Because he knew. It only took once. The culmination of fear and self-doubt rolled into a single, irreversible act.

He gave Kurt a subtle, encouraging nod to show that he understood, that he’d been there, that he wasn’t judging or leaving. Kurt’s gaze shifted down again, and he resumed his story.

“As soon as I found out, I drove straight home from school. I-I still don’t even know how I made it back. I sat there in the living room, and I just waited. I practiced what I was going to say to my dad, over and over, until he finally walked into the house, like, _hours_ later. When he came in the door I stood up and I just blurted it out before I could lose my nerve.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Dad, I have bad news. I’m gay, and I got a girl pregnant.’”

Blaine blinked at him once, then burst out laughing. “Oh my god. You are _fearless_.”

“Oh, it’s _hilarious_ now,” Kurt said through his own mortified chuckle. “But then? I thought I was going to _die_.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, after the color returned to his face, he said–” His voice halted, and he cleared his throat before finishing his sentence. “He said, ‘Only one of those things sounds like bad news to me.’” The corners of Kurt’s lips turned up in the barest hint of a smile, relieving the sudden cold prickle of dread in Blaine’s stomach. “He told me he knew I was gay. Had known it since I was three years old. And that he accepted me for who I was. ‘Nothing I can do to change it,’” Kurt said, mimicking what Blaine assumed was his father’s gruff tone.

“But the baby...that changed everything, of course.” Kurt paused to take another sip of his drink, holding the liquid in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. Blaine watched its course, from lips to cheeks to milky white throat covered by far too many inches of silk scarf; all the while contemplating the abstract thought that they’d both trudged separately down twin winding, prickly paths of experience that somehow, wonderfully, happened to converge here: on this day, in this city, at this table, together.

“She...all along, when Brittany was pregnant, she told me she didn’t want it… _him_ , Elliot. She was going to give the baby away. And I agreed with her. I didn’t want anything to do with her, or this...this awful _mistake_ I’d made. I was supposed to get out of there, you know? I was supposed to escape from that stupid town, and all those people who made me so miserable.” His voice crept higher, shriller with each phrase, as if he was reliving the terror and regret of those months, seven long years ago and hundreds of miles away. Then he exhaled a deep sigh, one that seemed to rise all the way from his toes. “But it wasn’t that easy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It just spun around and around in my head, like, _oh my god, Kurt, you’re gonna be a father_.

“I remember, I went with her to a doctor’s appointment and we found out it was going to be a boy and I...that’s when I knew. It was real, then – a him, a boy, a baby – I just...I couldn’t let him go. He was my son. I couldn’t just hand him to a stranger and forget all about him so I could go off to gallivant New York and chase my dreams. I had to be in his life. And I knew...I had to stay. For him.”

“So you stayed there?” Blaine was completely transfixed by Kurt’s mellifluous voice, spilling its tale of courage. He placed both elbows on the table and leaned in as close as he could, anxious to hear the rest.

Kurt nodded. “I had already been accepted to college here – The New School. The day I called and canceled my enrollment was...that was one of the worst days of my life. I cried every night...every moment I thought about it, for weeks.” Kurt shook his head sadly. “No, months. _Years._ Every time it rained and I didn’t have my umbrella, or I dropped a pen in class, or they were out of whole wheat pastry flour at the grocery store. Anything remotely bad, and I just...collapsed.”

He looked so forlorn, so vulnerable, that Blaine ached to reach across the table and take his hand, wind their fingers together and give him something to hold on to. He didn’t – he was afraid it was too soon – but his gaze kept dropping down to where Kurt’s fingertips toyed absently with the gleaming silver handle of his fork, right beside his empty plate.

“Elliot was born in July. Two months to the day after graduation. As soon as Brittany was out of the hospital she just...handed him over to me. Told me she knew I’d do a good job raising him, and that was that. I was eighteen, and I was a single parent. Stuck in Ohio, for what I figured would be forever.” Kurt’s voice softened, even as his features set in a deep frown. “Part of me was trying to be positive and care for this _thing_ I was responsible for bringing into the world, and that I said I wanted. But at the same time, I couldn’t stop mourning the loss of my own life.”

“I—I know exactly what you mean,” Blaine stammered. How many times had he felt the same way – bitter resentment seeping into his soul, threatening to cloud the love and utter delight he experienced whenever he looked at his beautiful daughter?

“We lived at home with my dad and my stepmom. They were...in the end, they totally supported my decision to keep Elliot. They were _amazing_. I _never_ would’ve survived that first year without their help. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing with a _baby_. They taught me everything – how to change him and give him a bath. They would wake up with me in the dead of night and help me feed him, or –” Kurt cut himself off with a short burst of laughter as he stared into empty space, reliving a memory Blaine could only try to imagine “– drive around the neighborhood while I held him in the backseat until he finally fell back asleep.

“But they told me they wouldn’t let me sacrifice my future because I had a baby. So they put me through college there – OSU, the Lima campus. Maybe it was that, or maybe...gosh, I don’t even remember exactly anymore.” Kurt looked up at Blaine, eyes bright, and shrugged. “I just...eventually I made peace with everything that had happened. I realized my life _wasn’t_ over. I was only, what, twenty? I had my family – helping me, motivating me to push forward. So, slowly, I started dreaming again.

“My stepbrother and his wife – she’s my best friend from high school – had moved out here after we graduated. We were all supposed to come together, of course, before I found out about Elliot. I started visiting them – just for the weekend, once or twice a semester. Then I came for spring break, and then a week in summer. My parents would take care of Ell, and I would fly here and just... _enjoy_ for a few days. Rachel and I, we’d rush for Broadway tickets, or window shop on Fifth Avenue, or go out for ice cream at two in the morning.”

“That sounds _amazing_.” Blaine could envision Kurt so clearly: laughing freely as he strolled down the streets of Manhattan, reveling in his brief bout of freedom. He suddenly felt a shot of longing deep in his chest that reverberated all the way down in the pit of his stomach. He’d been here, in the same city, at the same time. If only he’d known Kurt then...

“It was. I’ll never forget those days as long as I live. Coming here was like...like recharging my battery. I never took time for myself at home. _Ever._ It was school, work, Ell. Every day.” Kurt let out a little laugh. “Of course, being away for a weekend didn’t stop me from being a parent. I swear I called to check up on him at least five times a day. I remember, Carole started hanging up on me to get me to stop calling!” Kurt laughed again, and the sound enveloped Blaine in a hazy glow of pleasure, inviting him into the warm, precious inner fold of Kurt’s most sacred memories.

“The next summer, I landed an internship at a magazine in Midtown. I was here for two months. It was _awful_ being away from Ell for that long. But I was _so_ happy here.” Kurt grinned at Blaine, and he looked so sure, so content that Blaine instantly returned his smile. “That’s when knew...I had to come here for good. This was still where I was meant to be, and it was where I wanted to raise Ell. It was wonderful being close to my parents and having their help, but it was time for the two of us to make our own life together. I wanted him to be exposed to...diversity and new ideas. And I didn’t want him to have to deal with... _looks_ from people who didn’t approve of a young, single gay guy raising his son.”

“Like in Ohio.” Blaine had been on the receiving end of _looks_ like that, even though he only ever made brief visits home.

“Like in Ohio,” Kurt repeated with a nod. “So when I graduated the next year, I packed us up and we moved here. Four years late and with a _lot_ of extra baggage.” Kurt stopped to laugh, and Blaine joined in when he pictured all of Maya’s clothes and toys and girly things, stacked and stowed in bulging closets. “There were...a ton of bumps in the road, and I was _broke_ , but...we did it.” Blaine’s pulse pattered with pride when Kurt smiled brilliantly, the motion carving cute, crinkly lines into the corners of his eyes.

“So he never sees his mother, then?”

Kurt shook his head, his sunny smile shrinking into a tight-lipped line of pale pink. “No. Brittany doesn’t…” He trailed off with a cynical laugh. “I seriously don’t think she even remembers she has a kid sometimes. I email her with updates every once in a while, but she rarely bothers to respond. She’s…kind of a mess. Just...no purpose, wandering. I don’t want Elliot around her, and she still doesn’t seem to want to be involved. So it works out for all of us.”

“But still hard to be on your own.” Blaine gave him a weak, honest smile. “I know.”

Kurt mirrored Blaine’s expression – worldly and a little weary, weighing heavy with meaning. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Finn and Rachel still help out a lot, when he’s not playing with his band and she’s not in a show.”

“Oh, your friend is an actor, too?”

“Yes. She’s _fabulous_. You’ll have to meet her.”

“I hope I get a chance to.” Blaine’s tone edged toward flirtatious again, testing the waters after Kurt’s emotional story. He watched Kurt’s smile shift, then grow; the years of experience in his expression melted away, leaving only the simple joy of youth, sparkling with interest and excitement.

“I don’t regret any of it,” Kurt told him, reaching for the pitcher to refill their glasses: Blaine’s first, then his own. “It’s not…it wasn’t a path I ever _dreamed_ I would take, but in the end I got where I wanted to be. And so much more. I can’t even imagine my life without Elliot.” His oversized grin revealed a tiny peek of white teeth that glinted in the candlelight. “I’m happy,” he added, echoing his own words from earlier. But now he sounded confident and self-assured – more like the man Blaine had met that morning. Though Blaine hoped, selfishly, that their date was a tiny part of the reason Kurt was feeling so good.

“So, do you guys go back to Ohio a lot?” Blaine asked him.

“A few times a year, usually. In the summer for Ell’s birthday, and then again at Christmas. And my parents come here for Thanksgiving and Easter.”

“Maya and I usually go out there for Christmas, too,” Blaine told him. “We’ll have to...I don’t know...share a ride to the airport or something next time.”

Kurt arched an eyebrow, his lips still curved with the remnants of a grin. “Or something?”

Blaine quirked one shoulder, suddenly bashful again. “You know. I’d say we could fly together, but...who knows. You might be sick of me by then.”

“That seems unlikely,” Kurt said, his gaze steady on Blaine’s. He held it for a beat, silent, before continuing. “If anything, you’ll be the one tired of me talking your ear off like I just did. That was probably way more than you ever wanted to know.”

“No. I want to know everything about you,” Blaine blurted out before he could give his words an ounce of thought. He winced when he heard his own overly earnest tone. “Sorry,” he exclaimed with a quiet chuckle. “I’m not exactly smooth, am I?”

Kurt smirked – rather happily, Blaine noted. “That makes two of us,” he laughed.

“I’m serious, though,” Blaine insisted. “I like listening to you. I want to hear...everything. Anything. But especially all this. It’s...it means a lot to me. ”

Kurt watched him for a moment before speaking, his voice gentle and reflective. “I haven’t told anybody that story in a long time.”

“Thank you for telling me.” Blaine leaned back slightly in his seat. “Do you feel like listening to my version now?”

Kurt’s eyes grew rounder, and he nodded faintly, as if he’d just been offered something he’d been desperately waiting for. “Maya had some...interesting things to say about her mom this afternoon,” he commented, referring back to their short chat after Blaine’s show that afternoon.

“What did she say?”

“Well...she called her by her first name, first of all.”

“Santana.”

“Yes. She said she ran away to Europe, and that you don’t like her.” Kurt frowned. “But I couldn’t tell if she was confused by you not liking women at all, or if you specifically don’t like her mom.”

Blaine heaved a sigh: long and deep, purging any trace of fear and reticence. He wanted to tell Kurt everything – even the parts he’d tried and failed to completely blanch from his memory. “So. Santana. She was my best friend in high school. Wait –” Blaine shook his head, needing focus. “Let me back up.”

He felt his eyes drift down to his empty plate, but he forced them back up to meet Kurt’s riveted stare. “I came out when I was fourteen. I went to a public school then. And...there was this...stupid school dance. I went with another guy – just a friend of mine, the only other gay kid in the school. At the end of the night we got...beat up in the parking lot by these...three big guys. You know, because we were...they just, they came out of nowhere.”

Blaine watched Kurt’s eyes widen in horror – so discordant from the way they’d glimmered with joy just moments before. In the back of Blaine’s mind, where he could still form thoughts that were fenced off from the pain of his memories, he vowed to never again put that look of fear in Kurt’s eyes. “Oh, Blaine. I’m...I’m so sorry.”

“I haven’t told anybody about that in...” Blaine trailed off, slowly shaking his head. He wondered how ten years could have already passed since that ultimately fateful night – still so vivid in Blaine’s mind that he felt like he could reach through the cloudy sands of time and dab the blood from the ripe bruises on his cheeks. “I don’t think anyone in New York knows.”

Blaine saw it in the way Kurt’s eyebrows twitched upward, the way his lips came together in a tight ghost of a smile: acknowledgement of Blaine’s trust, acceptance of the burden of worry that Blaine carried through his life.

“After that happened, my parents sent me to private school – this all-boys academy. You know, tacky blazers and striped ties,” Blaine explained with an eyeroll that he hoped would clear away some of the somberness he’d released into the air.

“ _Ohhh._ ” Humor slowly trickled into Kurt’s expression. “I should have guessed you were a prep school boy.”

“Is it obvious?”

Kurt’s gaze dropped down to the bow tie at Blaine’s neck. “ _No_...” he remarked, his voice lilting sarcastically.

“Hey! You said it wasn’t too much!”

“It’s not! It’s...kind of adorable,” Kurt said, biting down on a smile.

Blaine hummed happily, feeling victorious. “I bet you would have thought I was adorable in my blazer, too,” he remarked with a smug smile that didn’t nearly let on how his heart was pattering with joy over Kurt’s endearment.

“ _Ehhh._ ” Kurt wrinkled his nose. “I’m not keen on polyester.”

Blaine’s smirk morphed into a gasp of mock disbelief. “Kurt! Here I am opening myself up to you, telling you my whole life story, and you’re theoretically turning me down during my neediest of years?”

Kurt’s eyes sparkled mirthfully. “Don’t worry, Blaine. I can’t see myself ever turning you down, even in theory.”

What would his life had been like if he’d met Kurt Hummel ten years ago? If there had been just a hundred miles fewer between them, and their winding paths had crossed sooner? They could have met a hundred times before – in Ohio, or on the streets of New York. They’d been so close – in distance and in experience – and yet invisible to one another.

But now...it didn’t even matter, did it? Because here they were, together – talking, smiling, flirting, drinking, gazing at each other as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

Happy, indeed.

“So, you and...Santana?” Kurt prompted after taking another sip of his drink. “How did that happen?”

“I met Santana at some school function my sophomore year of high school. She went to our sister school – an all-girls school about a mile down the road. She was the exact opposite of me in every way: brash and outspoken and stubborn. I guess that’s how we ended up becoming friends. I tended to be a little too...eager to please everyone after the… _incident_ at my old school. I didn’t want to piss anybody off. Whereas all Santana _ever_ did was piss people off. It was kind of an ‘opposites attract’ sort of thing.

“I never came out at Dalton. They had this whole ‘tolerance, no bullying’ policy, but still...after the...I was petrified to tell anybody the truth. People just _assumed_ I was straight, and I never corrected them, or gave them a reason to think they were wrong.

Kurt’s brow knit with sympathy, etching deep lines into his forehead. He kept his gaze level with Blaine’s the entire time, listening intently as Blaine spoke.

“One night, Santana and I went to this party. She’d been drinking, and she started coming on to me. I just kinda went with it because...” he shrugged helplessly. “What else was I supposed to do? So we were, like, kissing in my friend’s basement, on the couch. I just remember, it was _so_ awkward. And then at the exact same moment we both kinda... _snapped_. We pulled apart and we were both like, ‘I can’t do this! I’m gay!’”

Kurt’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “She’s gay, too?”

Blaine nodded. “I’d had _no_ idea until that moment.” He still remembered the way she’d sobbed out a plea into his shoulder, begging him not to tell anybody, and the tears they’d shed together when Blaine confided in her about his assault. “She kept it a secret from everybody. Her family was really traditional, so she was terrified they’d disown her if they knew.

“We were… _inseparable_ after that. Everybody thought we were dating, and we never denied it. We were an excellent cover for each other because we went to different schools, so we didn’t have to act like we were dating during the school day. And it was pretty common for the Dalton guys to date the Crawford girls.”

Blaine took a deep breath, steeling himself for the next part of his story. “One weekend my junior year, my parents were away and she broke into my dad’s liquor cabinet so we could try doing shots. So we were... _really_ drunk, and we had the bright idea to see what all the fuss was about...straight sex.” He looked down at the table for a moment, shaking his head sadly. “We didn’t use anything because, you know, we were both gay, so how could _anything_ happen?” He rolled his eyes at his own naivete.

“Been there,” Kurt remarked, twisting his mouth sheepishly.

“We thought we could do it, you know? Have the baby. We were best friends. We weren’t just gonna get rid of it. But it was…such an abstract concept. We couldn’t even begin to wrap our brains around how difficult everything was going to be.

“When her parents found out, they kicked her out of the house. My parents...they were fucking _livid_. They’d never been thrilled that I was gay, but getting a girl pregnant? Obviously, that was way worse. But I begged them to help, and so they let her move into our spare bedroom.

“I remember...I could hear her through the wall, crying...every night. I’d try to go in there and talk to her, but she wouldn’t open the door. She started pulling away from everyone…skipping school, that sort of thing. Although I foolishly thought everything would go back to normal once the baby came.”

“You had no idea,” Kurt murmured. “How could you? I was the same way.”

Blaine nodded in acknowledgement. “After Maya was born, Santana lasted about a month and a half before she took off. Literally…she just left me with Maya one day. Said she was going to the store or something, and she never came back.”

Kurt gaped at him. “Wow.”

“I felt like an _idiot_ …like I’d destroyed my whole life. I’d lost my best friend and wound up stuck with a _baby_ , of all things. What the hell was I supposed to do?” Blaine flexed his fist under the table: closed, open, squeezing his hand into a tight ball then releasing it, letting go of his lingering anger along with the movement. “I’d been holding on to all these little threads of control, just...staying positive and telling myself things would work out for the best. But when she left, it…it all came crashing down.”

“So what did you do?”

“I...my parents.” Blaine ducked his face down, feeling the burn of shame in his cheeks. “They…took care of everything. They hired a nanny so I could finish my last year of high school. They told me they still wanted me to go to college, wherever I wanted, and that they’d take care of the rest. I always wanted to perform – I sang in Glee club all through high school, and I was in plays and stuff. So I applied to NYU, and when I got my acceptance letter, I told them I was going to New York. And that was it – they let me go. The week after graduation, we all came out here, and I found a place for Maya and me to live, and we hired another nanny. They paid for it all.”

Kurt’s eyebrows nearly grazed his hairline. “That’s...wow. That was really generous of them.”

“Yeah...” Blaine could feel his entire face wrinkle with a deep frown. “I don’t want to dismiss everything they did, or make it seem like they don’t love me or something, but…I could never shake the feeling that they were anxious to...to pay for the problem to go away? Like, they had the money to do those things, so that was the easiest option to take care of the issue.”

“Well…regardless, you still ended up achieving everything you wanted.”

“Not everything,” Blaine muttered under his breath, too low for Kurt to hear.

“What about Santana? She really never came back?”

“No. I mean, I hear from her sometimes...really randomly. She’s a model in...I don’t know, I guess she moves around a lot. She’s in Paris frequently. One time she was in Singapore. She’s never in the States – or if she is, she doesn’t tell me.”

Blaine paused to gulp down the last of his sangria – relishing the way the cold liquid soothed his dry throat, willing the alcohol to calm his nerves after revealing so much of himself to Kurt. “I think she feels guilty sometimes, though,” he speculated aloud. “She sends these gifts, once or twice a year. Expensive, extravagant, ridiculous things like little high heels and purses. But for the most part, I think she just wants that part of her life to be over.”

“What do you tell Maya?” Kurt asked.

Blaine let out a quiet snort. “The truth,” he said with a shrug. “What else can I do? As a rule, I try not to...shelter her from much. So I’m honest about it. Santana left us. That’s a fact. She left me when I needed her, and she left Maya without a mother.” 

Blaine had worked hard, so damn hard, to build a positive image of family for Maya – an image that didn’t include a mother. Instead, Blaine had given her his parents, his older brother. Nannies, cast mates, distant cousins who came into town on vacation, neighbors who took pity on the poor single dad down the hall and invited them over for dinners and movies and parties with families they didn’t really belong to.

_“Family is all the people who love you,”_ Blaine had once explained to Maya in lieu of a bedtime story, snuggled up beside her in her tiny, frilly bed. _“Sometimes that’s your mommy and daddy, and sometimes it’s people you aren’t really related to.”_

“What about you?” Kurt asked softly. “Do you want it to be over, too?”

Idly, Blaine ran a finger through the condensation that had gathered on the pitcher at the center of their table, watching drops of water slip down polished glass to pool on the dark, rustic wood tabletop. “Sometimes,” he confessed, finally giving voice to the thoughts that often ran rampant through his mind. “Sometimes, I want to know what it would’ve been like to go to a keg party in college, or to stay out all night running around the city, ending up at any place that was open, not having a care in the world. I always had help with Maya, but I still never let myself do anything – maybe once or twice a year in four years of school. I would just go to my classes and my rehearsals. Any free time I had, I spent it with Maya.”

Blaine stared at his hands as he rubbed the pads of his fingers together, spreading the cold moisture over his skin. “I wasn’t usually...sad about it. Just...I don’t know, exhausted? Like, I’m always ten steps behind everybody else. I never feel like anything’s taken care of. And sometimes I just want to say...fuck it. Just throw my hands in the air and give up.” Closed, open went his fist again; his slick fingertips curled into the weathered skin of his palm. “Why can’t I ever catch up? Why am I the one who has to carry all this responsibility around? Why couldn’t I have been the one who ran away and never looked back?”

Blaine was breathing heavy when he finished speaking. He didn’t realize how worked up he’d been getting, but now that it’d hit him, he had to blink furiously to erase the prickle of tears stinging behind his eyes.

“Sorry,” he apologized on a burst of nervous laughter. “I didn’t…I don’t let myself think about it too much. I just–”

“You just do it,” Kurt interjected, and Blaine failed miserably at keeping his features in check when Kurt slid a hand across the table to lightly cover his fist. Blaine’s wet, wrinkled fingertips warmed against Kurt’s dry, smooth skin; the touch was foreign but immediately comforting. “You do it because it’s the only thing to do. Trust me, there’ve been so many times I’ve dreamed about what it would be like to give up, too. It’s…” he trailed off with a sigh. “Like the weight of the entire world is on my shoulders. But at the end of the day…you wouldn’t ever want to run away, would you?”

“No,” Blaine whispered. He didn’t want to run away from anything right now – he wanted to run toward it, laughing, with open arms. “I love her. I’d never...she’s the _best_ thing that’s ever happened to me. The best. I can do…I know I can do anything after raising her.”

Kurt smiled at him sincerely. “It’s hard sometimes. It’s okay that it’s hard. But...Blaine, I just met you, but I can tell you’re an amazing father. She adores you. You’re doing great.”

“Thank you,” Blaine croaked, swallowing down the emotion that was building in his throat. “It’s...hard to find somebody who really understands.”

Kurt simply smiled at him, his own eyes glassy in the flickering candlelight. Here was someone who truly understood what Blaine had been through, what he dealt with every day. Who’d experienced something so rare and life-altering, just like he had. Who had wit and charm and intelligence, all wrapped up in a stunning package.

“I feel like I’ve been looking for you forever.” Blaine’s musings slipped off his tongue in a voice that was barely louder than a whisper. He hooked his thumb over one of Kurt’s fingers and tightened his grip, stroking once over Kurt’s knuckle, feeling him, firm and real in his hand.

Kurt’s face lit up, impossibly brighter than the radiant glow he’d worn the entire evening. He opened his mouth slightly – to speak, perhaps, or maybe just to stare agape – but Blaine’s body decided in that very moment to send a yawn rising up in his throat.

“God, I’m sorry,” he apologized, embarrassed, throwing his free hand over his mouth. “She got me up at six-thirty this morning to meet your damn kid.”

“Oh, well, I apologize for the inconvenience, sir,” Kurt teased in an airy voice that wavered lightly, giving away the effect Blaine’s words had on his heart. “I’m sure you wish you’d stayed in bed instead of meeting us.”

“No–” Blaine started, but he cut himself off when their waited dropped the check at the edge of their table. He released his hand from under Kurt’s and snatched up the thin black folder before Kurt could make a move. 

“Blaine…”

“I got it,” Blaine said, dismissing Kurt’s protest as he slid his credit card into the plastic sleeve. “I’m the one who asked you, remember?”

Kurt huffed out a sigh. “Fine.” He paused for just a moment before the edges of his mouth slowly started creeping upward again. “But on one condition.”

“Anything.”

“You let me get next time.”

Blaine grinned at him. “As long as that means there’s gonna be a next time.”

Kurt mirrored his luminous smile. “You found me, Blaine. There’s no way I’m letting you go now.”


	9. The End of the Day

“I know you’re really tired and we both need to get home, but...can we make one last quick stop?” Kurt almost felt guilty for asking when Blaine looked at him confusedly, the brassy street lights above them accentuating dark circles under his eyes that weren’t quite so visible in the warm glow of the restaurant. But Kurt had a feeling Blaine would appreciate the idea he’d suddenly come up with as they stepped out into the deep drone of the night.

“Sure,” Blaine answered, quiet but eager. A tiny seed of excitement bloomed in Kurt’s chest, and he rode the wave of adrenaline, wordlessly reaching for Blaine’s hand. He was going all in now: no regrets, no holding back. This wonderful thing had fallen into his lap – completely unexpected, beyond even the wildest of dreams he’d stopped dreaming long ago – and Kurt meant it when he said wasn’t letting it go. 

Neither was Blaine, he realized happily when he felt Blaine’s fingers entwine with his: a motion Kurt had seen so many times, on the streets and in movies and between his friends and family members, but never with a hand in his own – at least, not one that matched his size, his heat, his intention. He bit down hard on a huge, rapturous grin as they started walking toward the subway, though nothing could hamper his elation right now.

The twenty-four hour ice cream shop was three stops away, in the direction of the long route back to Brooklyn. Kurt had only been there once before; Rachel had taken him during one of his weekend trips to New York in college, when they’d stayed out half the night – best friends, running around the bright and bustling city together like young fools without a care in the world, building precious teenage memories that Kurt had clung to once he’d returned to his reality.

The experience was the first thing Kurt’s mind had rewound to when Blaine was telling his story over dinner, baring his soul and spilling long-held dreams. Kurt wanted to give Blaine something – however small – he’d never gotten a chance to experience; something that might help clear away the clouds of regret that wafted over his head.

“What’s this?” Blaine asked with a delighted chuckle when Kurt led him toward the doors of the shop, swung wide open with boisterous rock and roll music blaring out into the warm night. 

“You said you wanted to know what it would be like to gad about the city and find any place that was open,” Kurt reminded him. “Once when I came to visit Finn and Rachel, we ended up here. I got the  _best_  ice cream I’ve ever had. Well...maybe it wasn’t  _that_  great. But it seemed like it at the time.” Kurt pressed his lips together, forcing himself to stop rambling. “I thought...maybe you might like it if we could...just be silly for a few minutes before we had to go home?” 

Blaine’s grin was so open, so child-like in its sheer exuberance that Kurt had to hold himself back from leaning in and kissing him right there, smack dab in the middle of the noisy, retro ice cream shop. 

“Kurt...” Kurt knew Blaine was thinking the exact same thing, what with the way his amber gaze dropped down to his lips. “You’re...”

Blaine’s eyes were still shining with happiness when they flicked back up to meet Kurt’s. The two men stood there, staring, for one long moment that stretched taut between them, teeming with a spectrum of emotions that catapulted far beyond the interest, the curiosity, the attraction Kurt had felt all day.

Love.

He was falling – hard, fast and true – in love with Blaine.

The realization sent a sudden burst of cool, tingly anxiety swooping low in his stomach. Kurt finally broke the lock on their gaze, biting his lip as he coyly glanced up at the chalkboard menu.

“Oh, and just so we’re clear,” he said, nonchalantly tossing his breathless voice toward Blaine while keeping his eyes trained on the brightly lit ice cream counter in front of them. “This doesn’t count as my ‘next time.’”

After ordering – Kurt dulce de leche, Blaine mint chocolate cookie, both in double scoops stacked high atop crispy sugar cones – they headed back outside to the plastic tables lining the shop’s glass facade. Kurt reached for a seat, but Blaine grabbed his hand before it could connect with the black plastic chair, tugging him up to sit on top of the table instead.

“I want to sit next to you,” Blaine said with an adorably bashful grin that made Kurt’s heart patter happily.

_Oh my god I am so in love with him._

They sat mostly in silence, their bodies squashed together on the round, wobbly tabletop; teetering on the uncertain edge of childhood and adulthood as they clutched their cones and watched the city – _their_ city, the place they’d both escaped to and the place they’d found each other – unfold its stories before them.

“You’re right,” Blaine remarked after a few minutes. “This is the best ice cream I’ve ever had.”

“ _Mmmmm_ ,” Kurt hummed in agreement around a mouthful of cold, sugary cream. “I told you.”

“How’s yours?” Blaine turned his face toward Kurt and leaned closer, so close Kurt could feel the heat of Blaine’s skin radiating against his cheek.

“Delicious,” Kurt replied, just as he gave his single remaining scoop another long, slow lick – partly because it _was_ delicious, and partly for show, because he knew Blaine’s eyes were trained on him.

“Can I try?”

Kurt turned slightly, just enough so his eyeroll of a gaze could meet Blaine’s. “I suppose?”

Kurt started to hold his cone in Blaine’s direction, but Blaine had another idea. He grabbed Kurt’s wrist, eliciting a startled squeak from Kurt, and bit deeply into the glossy mound of golden cream. Blaine’s eyelids fluttered shut as his lips closed over Kurt’s ice cream – luscious, rosy pink lips, clasped around sweet, melty...

_Oh, my—_

“ _Owwww_.” Blaine winced as the cold sensation hit his teeth, piercing a hole in the desire that had swiftly bubbled up in Kurt’s belly.

Kurt let out a shaky, high-pitched laugh. “Serves you right!” he exclaimed. “Gosh, and here I was thinking I could finally spend an evening without a kid around.”

Blaine’s nose was still wrinkled as he held his tongue against his two front teeth to warm them. Kurt’s eyes flew like magnets to the tiny nub of moist pink, visible for just a split second before it darted back into Blaine’s mouth. “You’re the one who took me for ice cream,” he shot back at Kurt.

“Well, then. Fine,” Kurt said loftily, holding his head up high. “See if I ever do it again.”

“ _Noooo_...”

Kurt snorted out a chuckle. Blaine sounded worse than Elliot during his most temperamental years. “You are seriously a child.”

Blaine swung his legs in the empty air below the table, pausing to gaze at taxis whizzing past and groups of teens and adults hurrying along the sidewalk in front of them. “I feel like one now,” he remarked before looking back at Kurt with a sweet, doe-eyed smile. “This was wonderful, Kurt. Thank you.”

Ripe silence enveloped them again, heaping more weight onto air that was already heavy, brimming, pouring over with want and anticipation and bliss, pure bliss.

_Oh, please kiss me. Please..._

“I guess we should probably take these to go,” Blaine said quietly, his voice tinged with regret.

Kurt felt his entire body deflate. “Yeah. You’re right,” he agreed with a small nod.

Blaine’s free hand came up to rest at the small of Kurt’s back – the same spot he’d let it lay earlier, when they’d met outside the theatre. He pressed lightly against Kurt’s jacket, guiding them both as they hopped off the table and onto the dirty concrete sidewalk. But unlike before, Blaine’s hand didn’t fall away. Instead, he let his palm slide across the full length of Kurt’s lower back until it hooked around his waist. He pulled Kurt close until their sides were flush again.

Kurt mirrored his pose, slipping his own hand along Blaine’s waistband, feeling the smoothness of his belt and scratchy-soft fabric of his red-checked button down. He held on tight, bunching a handful of cotton and leather and denim in his fist.

Neither man let go the entire walk back to the subway.

*******

Blaine took Kurt’s hand the moment he was able to again, once they’d paid their fare and hopped onto the L, sinking into two adjoining seats on the sparsely populated train. He gripped it tight as they settled in for the long ride back to Brooklyn, relishing the feeling of a hand that was so, so different than the tiny, pudgy, girlish one he was accustomed to holding. One that held his back with the same weight, the same grip, the same sureness.

“I might fall asleep,” Blaine mumbled, letting his head loll closer to Kurt’s shoulder. The endless scream of trains along electric rails was already lulling him toward unconsciousness, the vibrations weaving with the beats of butterfly wings that still thrummed in his belly.

He remembered hearing Kurt chuckle, and feeling the skim of Kurt’s thumb along the edge of his forefinger, before everything turned fuzzy.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. It’s my stop.” Kurt’s murmur roused him from his doze a few too-brief minutes later. Blaine inhaled deeply, trying to clear the sleep from his mind as the train slowed to a screeching halt.

“Let me walk you home,” Blaine urged as they trekked up the stairs, still hand in hand.

“Where do you live, anyway?” Kurt wondered aloud as they reached the street above, dim and quiet in the late hour.

“Nassau. Near the park.”

“Blaine!” Kurt stopped in his tracks and spun to face him, shooting him an incredulous stare. “Why’d you get off here?”

Blaine shrugged. “Because a gentleman walks his date home at the end of the night.”

“Yes – and, likewise, a gentleman doesn’t let his date walk a mile clear in the opposite direction of his home just so he can have an escort.” Kurt pinned him with a pointed look. “Go home to your little girl, Blaine. And stop paying that damn babysitter,” he added with a chuckle.

Kurt’s laughter slowly died away to silence as they both stood there at the top of the stairs, immobile; nothing but breath between them, darkness above them and firm sidewalk under their feet.

The moment was one like they’d been sharing together all day: the moment they met, the moment they confided in one another about their pasts – first at the parade, then again and again over dinner. Words and thoughts and memories had tumbled forth and framed a series of moments, each similar but brighter, weightier every time.

The harsh lights of streetlamps and headlights turned Kurt’s eyes a dusky, gleaming gray. Blaine watched him blink once, slowly, then again, before his eyes widened: absorbing the moment, this moment, one last moment that was even fuller than all the rest, and beckoning Blaine closer.

Blaine was only twenty-four, but he was lucky enough to have experienced love at first sight. Once, on a crisp September evening more than seven years ago, when a smiling doctor thrust a squirming, screaming bundle of baby girl into his arms. And again, today, on this evening, right here, as he stared deeply into blue eyes he hoped would never stop gazing at him like they were right now.

Blaine’s trembling hand came up to cup Kurt’s cheek – gently, reverently, just as he cradled the fragile euphoria of falling in love that burst in his heart. Kurt’s eyes faded to a gentle glimmer, then went dark, hidden behind closed lids as their lips finally came together for the first time.

It was a tender, simple touch of mouths that froze the moment, the seconds, the world around them. Blaine breathed in Kurt’s scent, closer than ever: the heat of it, and the spicy fragrance of his cologne, and something bold and rich, something inherently masculine and perfectly _Kurt_. It filled his nostrils, his head, his entire body with a heady throb of lust.

Blaine sighed out his exhale, and suddenly they were both moving: wet, warm mouths sliding against one another in a dance of pleasure, of joy, of possibility. Instinct led his lips, inexperienced but eager, as he melted into Kurt’s embrace.

Someone, somewhere moaned softly; the sound bobbed aimlessly in the melted puddle that once was his brain. He edged further, deeper, and was rewarded with the flavor of sweet caramel ice cream lingering on Kurt’s tongue.

Blaine finally tore his lips away, many seconds later, only for need of air. He kept his face close, panting damp puffs of breath over Kurt’s smooth, rosy skin as he nuzzled his nose against Kurt’s cheek.

“That was a good way to end the day,” Kurt murmured, so soft, and his kiss-throaty voice made Blaine’s stomach twist tightly with yearning for more.

“I can’t believe it actually has to end.” Blaine didn’t want it to end. Never, ever. He’d stay right here, wrapped in Kurt – breathing him, tasting him, exploring him forever – if he could be allowed.

“It’s just one day.” Their faces were still so close, but Blaine could see Kurt’s smile, and could feel on his nose how the apples of Kurt’s cheeks plumped with the movement of his mouth. “There’ll be lots more.”

“ _God_. I hope so.” Blaine placed a soft, aimless kiss near one corner of Kurt’s lips. “Can I call you?”

“I think that would be acceptable.” Kurt’s tone was so damn dry that Blaine chuckled.

“Right.” Still, Blaine couldn’t force himself to let go. He angled his head just slightly to again capture Kurt’s mouth with his own. Their second kiss was different: soft and closed-lipped, but not tentative like before. They lingered against one another, drawing out the moment as long as possible, dotting a perfect period at the end of their magical day.

“Okay, then,” Blaine sighed when he pulled back, far enough to see Kurt’s face but still wound in his strong embrace.

“Okay,” Kurt repeated.

Kurt was the one to move in this time – another press of lips against lips, coupled with a tight squeeze around Blaine’s waist. It evolved into a hug – suffocatingly tight and bordering on desperate, with Blaine’s arms thrown around Kurt’s neck, his face buried half in silky scarf and half in hot, smooth skin just below Kurt’s ear. The spot was so kissable; Blaine could just _devour_ it.

He held himself back. Because he really did need to get home. And there would be lots more days, after all.

“Okay,” he muttered again, his words muffled against Kurt’s skin.

“Okay,” Kurt echoed with a heavy sigh, and finally they parted, breaking into light laughter at themselves and their silly, smitten behavior.

“Well...goodnight, Kurt.” Blaine found Kurt’s gaze again – still clear and gray, and more adoring than ever. They gave each other one last grin before Kurt took a step back, leaving Blaine’s skin cold but his heart and soul on fire.

“Goodnight, Blaine. I’ll see you soon."

***

Kurt hummed lightly to himself as he clicked open the lock to his apartment door – “One Last Kiss,” he realized with a sly smile, and _oh_ , he was _definitely_ going to see that musical a few more times before Blaine ended his run.

The first thing Kurt’s eyes fell on was Finn, snoring open-mouthed on his plush beige couch. Kurt smiled as he approached his brother, reaching to tug a knit afghan off the back of the couch and drape it over Finn’s legs.

“Go back to sleep,” Kurt whispered when Finn stirred as he snapped off the television, silencing the DVD menu’s endless, blaring loop and plunging the room into sudden darkness. “It’s one in the morning. Just stay here tonight.”

Kurt shuffled his way through the dark to the hallway and pushed open the half-closed door to Elliot’s bedroom. He stopped in the doorway and stared into the room – a room he knew by heart: barely larger than a closet and decorated in earthy tones of green and blue and chocolate brown. Darkness engulfed any trace of color now, but for the garish yellow glow of the night light plugged into the outlet behind Elliot’s bed. Kurt could still remember the day they moved all of Elliot’s belongings into this tiny room, and how he’d stayed up late into the night to paint the walls while his son dozed on the couch.

Elliot’s sleepy voice startled him back to the present. “Where were you, Daddy?”

Kurt’s heart constricted in his chest. Elliot rarely ever called him _Daddy_ anymore. “I was out with Maya’s dad, honey. Remember?” He stepped into the room, reaching his son’s bedside in two long strides and crouching down to the floor beside its edge. “I’m back now. Did you have fun with Uncle Finn?”

Kurt could just make out the motion of Elliot’s head bobbing up and down against his pillow. “We played drums.”

Kurt’s eyelids slipped shut in defeat, though he couldn’t really bring himself to be angry at his brother at the moment. He’d simply apologize to the neighbors in the morning. “I’m glad you had fun, Ell,” he murmured, suddenly tired to the bone. “Uncle Finn is sleeping on the couch tonight. Auntie Rachel will come over in the morning and I’ll make pancakes. Sound good?”

“Uh huh.” Elliot was already sinking back into sleep. “With blueberries.”

“With blueberries. Of course.” Kurt leaned in and kissed his damp forehead. “I love you so much.”

Kurt was nearly out the door when he heard his son’s faint voice call out once more.  
“Is Maya’s dad your boyfriend now?”

Kurt paused, resting one hand on the doorframe to steady himself. “I don’t know, Ell,” he answered quietly, staring down at the wood floor by his feet. “Would that be okay if he was?”

“Uh huh. Then we could all live together and I would get to see Maya every single day.”

Kurt turned his face to crush his mouth against his shoulder, muffling any chance of a laugh. “Goodnight, Ell,” he whispered when he could speak again.

Once he was safely behind the closed door of his own bedroom, Kurt undressed quickly, tossing clothes into hampers and stowing them neatly in closets, and with them tucking away the heavy weight of responsibility he wore each day. He absently wiped a toner-soaked cotton ball across his brow, his nose, his chin, then crawled into bed and tugged his plush down comforter up to his neck.

And he giggled. He giggled like a high schooler – the teenage version of himself he’d rarely allowed himself to be, giddy over a delicious kiss from a handsome boy he was head over heels in love with.

He pressed his fingers against his lips, suppressing the sound but not the tingling he still felt where Blaine’s mouth had clung to his.

Kurt dreamed that night, for the first time in ages. About a new future that lay in front of him: sudden and unforeseen, and overflowing with joy.


	10. The Future

_One year later_

Maya’s dress was a filmy rainbow of flowing cotton, graduating from red to gold to green to violet in a dreamy ombre that swirled around her legs as she spun in place, giggling with delight. It was a gift from Kurt – he spoiled her rotten with new outfits these days, but this particular dress was  _perfect_  for the occasion, and his willpower had simply slipped away to nothing after five straight days of staring at the colorful frock in a boutique window during his commute home from work.

“She never lets me pick out her clothes,” Blaine grumbled, his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest as he leaned in Maya’s bedroom doorway.

Kurt shot Blaine a smug look up from where he sat cross-legged in the middle of Maya’s fluffy white rug, dappled with early morning sunlight. “That’s because you’re her dad. Ell doesn’t let me pick out his clothes, either. It’s just a... _thing_ ,” he said with a toss of his hand before he turned back to Maya. “Hold on, Maya, stay still for a sec.”

Maya abruptly stopped spinning; the skirt of her dress suddenly swished to stillness against her long legs. Kurt hummed, cocking his head before giving her hemline a satisfied nod. “Perfect! Just needed to be let out a little.”

“Can you take the pins out now?  _Please_!” Maya asked impatiently.

“Yes, ma’am. Turn!” Kurt rose to his knees and gripped Maya’s shoulders, rotating her so she was facing the opposite direction. He quickly unfastened the pearly white buttons lining the back of the dress and began to gingerly lift the garment off her shoulders. “She’s a  _weed_ , I swear. She’s grown like two inches since winter,” he remarked absently to Blaine, who answered with a murmur of agreement.

“Don’t prick me!” Maya cried, hunching her spine in self-defense as the pin-lined skirt hem brushed against her back.

“I won’t,” Kurt assured her.

“But you did that  _other_  time,” Maya reminded him in an accusing voice, half-muffled by fabric as her dress came up over her head. “ _Remember_?”

“Beauty is pain, love.” Kurt tossed the words over his shoulder as he made to leave her bedroom. He caught Blaine’s amused stare and returned it with a pleased smile, pausing in the doorway for a split-second to let Blaine press a kiss to his cheek before he headed back to the living room to restitch Maya’s hem on his sewing machine – which had at some point, somewhere along the way, taken up permanent residence in Blaine’s moderately more spacious apartment.

Kurt and Maya had a lot of style consultations now – lively chatter and exclamations behind her closed bedroom door that had Blaine wondering when his bookish baby girl had begun growing up into the budding model he now feared she’d become.

“I still like reading, too, Daddy!” she’d assured him once, crawling into his lap wearing a gauzy white nightgown and a ridiculous pair of silver-jeweled kitten heels – the latest gift courtesy of Santana and the shops of Tokyo. “I’m gonna be smart and go to college and be a doctor. Or  _maybe_  the President of the United States!”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Elliot had opined from his seat on the other end of the couch – he rarely strayed far from Maya’s side – where he clutched the latest edition of InStyle, wide open to one of his father’s articles. “You can like clothes and be smart, too!”

Maya and Elliot’s childish boyfriend and girlfriend relationship had softened over the past year to something closer to best friends. They still held hands wherever they went – a relic of childhood that Kurt feared would fade in a few years when puberty set in. Though by then, no doubt, their relationship would be changed again: this time, to brother and sister.

Kurt and Blaine were  _it_. They knew it as well as they knew how to whip up a Monday evening meal two eight year olds would happily inhale; as well as they knew their children’s favorite books and colors and school subjects, and the Christmas presents they’d received each year since they were born. They’d known it from the day they met and every day after, three hundred sixty-five times over.

Kurt’s family knew it – just a single night after Kurt had introduced Blaine to Finn and Rachel, and mere moments after his parents had stepped off their plane from Ohio the previous Thanksgiving.

“That one’s a keeper,” Kurt’s stepmother had discreetly whispered in his ear as Blaine took their suitcases and Maya started charming the pants off Kurt’s father.

“Yeah,” Kurt had affirmed, biting down on a radiant grin. “I’m never letting him go.”   
Blaine’s friends knew it, too – his theatre colleagues and his college buddies, his neighbors and his nanny. Not a week after his and Kurt’s first date, Amanda had offered Blaine a two-for-one deal so he and Kurt could go out.

“You guys deserve it,” she’d said, dismissing Blaine’s objection with a wave of her hand. “Now go back to his place and make out, already.”

So they did. Happily.

Kurt and Blaine had had a year’s worth of heart-pattering moments of bliss, reclaiming what years of dirty diapers and no-show babysitters and second jobs worked clear through the night had robbed them of. Dreams were discovered, hopes were confided, their souls were laid bare for the other to hold and shelter.

Their days together were filled with simple domesticity – not much changed from before they met, except now they both had a friend, a companion to help them slog through even the most monotonous and stress-crazed times. Blaine’s harried enthusiasm melded with Kurt’s cool, even-tempered humor, creating a beautiful harmony as they learned how to become a parent with a partner. On some evenings, Kurt led cooking lessons; others, Blaine taught the kids how to plunk out melodies on the keyboard he’d somehow managed to cram into a corner of his apartment. Then, around one dinner table or another, they’d fill the air with rich chatter and laughter as Maya and Elliot told stories about their school day, and Kurt gushed about the newest designer fashions he got to preview, or Blaine read in silly, dramatic voices from the latest scripts he received from his agent.

And the nights...once their children were tucked tightly into bed, or handed off to the care of a babysitter, Kurt and Blaine’s nights together overflowed with passion that simmered and bubbled to the surface, long trapped under the burdens of young, single fatherhood. Sometimes they raced toward ecstasy, breathing soundless gasps into the other’s sweat-slicked skin; more often they lingered, slow and languid, just like the first time they’d lain together in Blaine’s silent, candle-lit bedroom, when their limbs had shaken with nerves and the sheer force of the love they’d finally uttered aloud. Though most nights, they were content to revel in the simple comfort of clutching their lover close, whispering words of affection as they drifted toward sleep.

Soon, their days, their nights – all their tender moments together would become more frequent.

It had happened at random, without plan, just like their chance meeting. The first Friday after Blaine’s musical closed in April, Kurt and Elliot had stumbled upon an oft-talked about, yet never witnessed Anderson Dance Party. Blaine and Maya had pulled the two hesitant Hummels up on the couch with them to belt out and bounce along with a playlist of decade-old pop hits.

“Think you could get used to this?” Blaine asked, breathless, as the music ended. He wrapped his arms around Kurt’s waist to keep them both upright on the plush couch cushions.

“I think I’d murder you if you ever tried to jump on my couch like this,” Kurt deadpanned.

Blaine shook his head slowly, ignoring Kurt’s sarcasm. “That’s not what I was getting at.”

Kurt arched an eyebrow. “What were you getting at?”

Blaine opened his mouth; closed it. “I-I want you here all the time,” he finally confessed, an air of desperation in his stuttering voice. “Both of you. S-should be here. With us.” 

Kurt blinked at him – one, two, three times. “What?”

“Live here with us.” Blaine tightened his embrace, pressing his sweat-dampened body closer to Kurt’s. “Let’s...let’s be a family.”

Kurt was silent and still as his eyes roamed Blaine’s face – soft and open and imploring, and full of love. “That’s what Elliot said he wanted,” he finally whispered. 

“Really?” Blaine’s expression shifted to curiosity. “When?”

“The first day we met...when I got home from our date.” Kurt spoke slowly, recalling the quiet, shadowy moment in Elliot’s bedroom many months prior. “He asked if you were my boyfriend, and I asked him if that would be okay. He said it would because then we could all live together and he could see Maya every day.”

Blaine barked out a laugh. “No kidding.”

“Yeah.” Kurt swallowed hard and dropped his face down to stare at their feet, sunken into cushions that sagged under their combined weight. “We’re going to need a bigger couch,” he declared.

Blaine’s eyes, which had widened with alarm when Kurt’s gaze had fallen away, now crinkled under the force of his beaming smile. “You’re probably right,” he replied, his voice faded to a quiet rasp.

Kurt briefly looked back up at him before casting a glance around the warmly lit living room, crammed with a hodgepodge of furniture and overflowing bookshelves and pink- and purple-hued plastic toys. “And a bigger apartment.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Blaine breathed, nodding. “Let’s do it?”

Kurt returned his nod, slow and sure. “Want to do the honors?”

Blaine blew out a calming breath before speaking, raising his voice so it would project beyond the intimate circle they’d formed. “Hey, guys,” he called down to the kids, who’d wandered away from the dance party to examine something seemingly more interesting on Blaine’s iPad. “What do you think about all of us living together in the same place? Would you like that?”

His question was met with a pair of surprised gasps, coupled with a frantic nod from Elliot and an enthusiastic “ _Yeahyeahyeah!_ ” from Maya.

“Well, the jury’s in favor,” Kurt quipped as an enormous grin bloomed over his features.   
Blaine matched it, inch for joyful inch. “That sounds unanimous to me,” he said as he leaned forward to capture Kurt’s mouth in a searing, closed-lipped kiss.

“ _Yessss_.” Elliot held out a hand for Maya to high-five; Maya responded by throwing her arms around Elliot’s shoulders with an exuberant screech, sending a fiery blush rising high on Elliot’s round, freckled cheeks.

They were coming together under a single roof – four people, two names, one family. Begun in the most unconventional of ways, now merging as if nature had formed them as a single unit. But first, they had to revisit the event where it all started: the pride parade, the place of their meeting and the perfect, ebullient celebration of their newly formed life together.

Kurt grabbed Blaine’s wrist to glance at his watch as they gradually weaved their way toward the edge of the parade barricade. “How is it ten-thirty already?” he asked, frowning down at Blaine’s watch face.

“Well, you basically  _remade_  Maya’s dress this morning,” Blaine said.

“I  _hemmed_  it,” Kurt huffed, sliding his hand from Blaine’s wrist to his palm and giving it a light squeeze. ”It didn’t take  _that_  long. I think it’s your habitual tardiness rubbing off on me.”

“Hey! You’re the one who changed your outfit  _twice_. It’s a miracle we made it here at all.” Blaine grinned when Kurt shot him a mock scowl.

“Forgive me for wanting to look nice, Blaine.”

“You always look nice, Kurt,” Blaine complimented as his eyes drifted down to the neckline of Kurt’s pale purple button-down.

“It  _is_  our anniversary, after all,” Kurt reminded him.

Blaine grinned even wider. “It is.”

Kurt made a face again. “Except now we’re not gonna be able to get lunch before we see the apartment. It’s going to take  _forever_  to get back to Brooklyn.”

Blaine shrugged. “That’s why we have snacks!” He reached out and grabbed the zipper of Elliot’s backpack, tugging until the fastening freed enough to stick his hand inside. Elliot craned his neck to shoot Blaine a startled glance, but quickly turned back to Maya, jabbering incessantly by his side.

“You’re a dork,” Kurt muttered, a hint of a smile tugging at the remnants of his frown.

“A dork you love,” Blaine countered.

Kurt’s pale blue eyes danced with delight. “Very true.”

“And a dork who has food!” Blaine made a triumphant sound as he pulled his hand from Elliot’s bag.

“Goldfish,” Kurt commented, seizing the tiny pouch of yellow fish crackers Blaine clutched in his fist. “You sure know the way to my heart.”

“Well, I must be doing something right for you to want to be with me for a whole year.” Blaine playfully nudged him in the arm with his shoulder.

“For me to want to be with you  _forever_ ,” Kurt corrected him with a knowing smile.   
Below them, Maya’s voice suddenly rang out, echoing in the outer ring of their consciousness. “Look, they’re taking pictures! Daddy! Kurt!”

“ _Daaaad_ ,” Elliot called up to them. “Earth to Dad!” 

“ _Okay_ , Ell,” Kurt muttered to dismiss his son, his gaze never straying from Blaine’s. Elliot and Maya rolled their eyes at each other.

“They’re  _doing_  it again,” Elliot moaned. “Being all kissy faced.”

“How come you never kiss  _me_ , Elly?” Maya asked innocently; she rocked back and forth on her feet, sending a ripple of rainbow-hued fabric swaying across her legs.

“B-because,” Elliot stammered. “We have to be, like, eleven to do that.”

“But you can kiss me on the cheek!”

“N-no. I can’t!” Though they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend anymore, it would be an understatement to say that Elliot still harbored an enormous crush on Maya.

“ _Fine_. Then  _I’m_  gonna kiss  _you_!” Maya declared, grinning broadly as she leaned closer to a wide-eyed Elliot.

“I can’t believe it’s only been a year,” Blaine murmured to Kurt, both men oblivious to their kids’ kissing debate.

“I know,” Kurt agreed softly.

“A lot’s happened since then, huh?” A year before, at that very moment, the first sparks had fizzed and flown between them as they stood in the middle of a crowded street, holding their children close and their dreams at arm’s length. And now they were back in the same place, embracing all the love the world had gifted them.

“I wonder what we’ll be celebrating at next year’s parade.” Kurt shot him a long, significant glance, one that Blaine mirrored for a moment before quickly shifting coy.

“Another baby?”

An astonished laugh burst from Kurt’s chest; he threw his head back, letting the bubbly noise waft high above the crowd around them. Blaine took advantage of the moment, diving forward and latching his lips onto the smooth, exposed skin of Kurt’s neck and blanketing it with noisy kisses.

That was the image Maya found during her daily scan of  _The_   _New York Times_ the next morning: Kurt grinning widely, his arms wrapped around Blaine’s shoulders with Blaine’s face pressed against his neck. Below them, Maya’s lips were sealed delicately to Elliot’s flame-red cheek, with one honey eye trained on the photojournalist’s camera that Kurt and Blaine never noticed. A scatter of colorful confetti floated around the edges of the scene, framing the moment like a perfect picture of joy.

The family portrait was the first thing Kurt and Blaine hung on the walls of their new apartment, where it remained for years to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though this is the end of this fic, I will most certainly write more one-shots in this verse in the future. So make sure to bookmark this story or [follow me on Tumblr](http://leepbc14.tumblr.com/tagged/Tender-Years). I'll take prompts and answer headcanon questions on there, too!


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